Republicans and Democrats have MERGED: It's all one big, police state party of insanity now!
by: J. D. Heyes
In recent days the House, thanks to House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, adopted a $1 trillion-plus budget bill that adds hundreds of billions to the federal debt and decreases further the opportunity for our progeny to have a good life.
With its passage, this latest budget represents the complete political sell-out of the American people.
Prior to this budget, there were still vestiges of policy difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats have historically been known as the party of Big Government, favoring high-dollar welfare programs and expansion of the federal bureaucracy at every turn.
On the other hand, Republicans were historically the party of smaller government, fiscal and personal responsibility and maximum liberty. The election of George W. Bush signaled a dramatic change in Republican orthodoxy, however, with Big Government programs like the major expansion of Medicare (Part D) and the No Child Left Behind law. The only president to have expanded the federal budget more than Bush has been Obama.
But as we can see with this latest budget, Obama is getting plenty of help from the "opposition party," which not only provided full funding for Obamacare and the president's refugee resettlement plans, but appreciably increased spending on virtually all of Obama's priorities, budget deficit be damned.
One party rule
As former GOP presidential contender and U.S. representative from Colorado, Tom Tancredo notes – as reported by Breitbart.com – the end result represents the complete merger of the Democratic and Republican establishments.
Congress has adopted a 2016 federal budget that makes it official: The Republican Party and the Democrat Party have merged.
In the name of stability and progress, Republican leaders have agreed with Democrats to put big government on autopilot — with no change in the programmed destination, full-blown socialism. On December 18, at Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan's urging, 150 House Republicans voted to double down on the politics of surrender.
Yesterday, we thought we had two parties, Republicans and Democrats, but now we see that we have only one, the Repubocrat Party, the party of No Shame.
Tancredo, like most conservatives, feels betrayed after helping elect the largest number of Republicans to Congress – as well as state legislatures and governorships – since the Civil War; they were sent there to oppose Democrats and the Obama agenda, not support and even expand it. Yet that's what they've done, at virtually every turn.
Tancredo notes specifically:
-- In 2016 it likely won't matter who you vote for because "government growth is on autopilot, and the expansion of imperial government will continue, whether we elect Democrats or Republicans;"
-- Republicans talk about ending "sanctuary cities" whose local governments harbor illegal aliens (against federal law), and 5 million visa overstays, but do nothing to actually end the practices;
-- Republicans talk about reigning in the out-of-control federal bureaucracy, but continue to fund every agency without making any effort at all to use their power of the purse to defund – and hence reign in – the various agencies.
Tancredo goes on to make this admission as well: He "left the GOP" two months ago, and is now a political Independent. He says that's what the conservative and constitutionalist base that is continually lied to and abused by the GOP leadership need to do – bail, and let the party earn back their trust (if that's possible).
'We deserve better'
In the meantime, he says, voters can exact some revenge during the primary season by supporting candidates who are committed to busting up the D.C. establishment cabal currently occupied by both men and women who are loyal to everyone and everything but voters.
Tancredo paraphrased the Republican leadership's excuse for selling out their supporters:
Fulfilling commitments to K-street lobbyists is more important than keeping promises to the voters who elected us. Voters have preferences, but lobbyists have checkbooks. If you expect us to repeal slush funds and illegal regulatory mandates for the sake of principle, you're living in a different world.
As a former member of Congress, he knows exactly how "the system" works.
"We can do better; we must do better. Living on hypocrisy is not a healthy diet for patriots," he concluded.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052413_Republican_sellout_patriotism_single_government_party.html#ixzz3v92zedOU
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
"Both sets of ideas reject the fundamental American creed that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the sole purpose of government to secure these rights."
Why There’s Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference Between Any of Them (Democrats and Republicans)
By Thomas DiLorenzo
The late Senator Everett Dirksen once said “there’s not a dimes worth of difference” between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The subsequent four decades since he made that remark have certainly proven his prescience. The current “Paul Ryan budget,” which seems to have been written, line by line, by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, is slam-dunk proof of Senator Dirksen’s observation.
Thomas Mullen has just published a new book, Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From?, that goes a long way toward explaining why this is. Mullen traces the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism and “liberalism” (in the American sense of the word) and shows that they both contradict the true American creed, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, that the sole purpose of government is to protect our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The two most influential conservative authors who have shaped the thinking of British and American conservatives, Mullen argues, are Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke. Hobbes believed that man’s natural state was “a state of war” of “everyone against everyone.” This, says Mullen, is “the basis for all conservative thinking. Not only does man need a government, but one powerful enough to ‘keep him in awe’”. It gets worse. Hobbes also believed that “because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone . . . it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to everything, even to one another’s body.” (Hobbes’s own words). This of course is the exact opposite of the American creed of natural rights to life, liberty and property, including one’s own body.
This is why conservatives believe that only government can keep “our dark nature at bay,” writes Mullen. It is why they typically support law enforcement, no matter how inept or criminal the enterprise of policing becomes. “Rarely will you see conservatives side with an alleged victim of police brutality,” he writes.
It was Hobbes who also wrote that “subjects” can never change the form of their government, no matter what. “This completely contradicts the [American]Creed’s assertion [in the Declaration of Independence] that the people have the right to alter or abolish their government and replace it with another,” writes Mullen. Lincoln was obviously a Hobbesian, since this idea was at the heart of his new and fanciful theory of the “perpetual union” held together by the threat of murdering hundreds of thousands of dissenters.
Edmund Burke agreed with this notion that “the people are permanently bound by the contract made by their ancestors.” He also believed that rights to life, liberty and property were not natural or God-given, but granted to us by politicians. That is why conservative politicians like Rick Santorum, for example, went on NPR to mock the idea that government “shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom . . . shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.”
Burke believed that “our rights” were not just government grants, but also the result of “longstanding traditions.” Consequently, modern conservatives rarely, if ever, criticize let alone repudiate such things as FDR’s New Deal. Conservative Newt Gingrich even once hailed FDR as the greatest president of the twentieth century. “Some day, conservatives will defend Obamacare,” Mullen quotes Tom Woods as saying. For conservatives, “to challenge the sovereign power, regardless of how objectionably it is wielded, is to endanger all of civil society.” This helps explain the extreme hatred that conservatives have displayed toward Yours Truly in particular, and LewRockwell.com in general. “Conservatives from Hobbes to Burke to Rick Santorum believe government power should regulate all areas of life,” Mullen accurately concludes.
Conservatives are also centralizers, following Hobbes’s belief that “the sovereign power should never be divided.” They are therefore enemies of another important part of the American Creed, federalism or states’ rights.
Conservatives in general also embrace various forms of mercantilism as their preferred economic policy. They will support competititon, but then they call for government intervention to make sure “the right people” win. This is because they incorrectly view economic activity as one big “war” with winners and losers. They tend to be ignorant of the truth about voluntary market exchange being mutually advantageous.
“You can hear Hobbes every day in neoconservative rhetoric” warning of the “instability” in foreign countries, writes Mullen, and of the alleged “need” for the U.S. military to intervene everywhere on earth where such “instability” exists. We heard this when George W. Bush said we need to “fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here,” and is also the argument that was made to “justify” the Korean and Vietnamese wars. From all of this comes the truly totalitarian idea of “American exceptionalism,” writes Mullen.
“Liberals,” on the other hand, are inspired (whether they recognize it or not) primarily by Karl Marx and Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. “[I]t was Rousseau and Marx who laid the modern foundation for liberalism.” Hatred of “inequality” is what animates all “liberals.” Whereas socialists “seek to abolish private property,” liberals want to “heavily regulate and redistribute it.” The latter are fascists, in other words, no different from conservatives, really.
The denial of the thousands of natural human differences, and their compulsion to have the state force “equality” on everyone, explains modern “liberals.” It even explains, says Mullen, why liberals even “insist on positive laws that prohibit anyone from refusing to associate with homosexuals.” He cites the case of the Christian couple who owned a bakery and refused to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. Liberals naturally sought legal penalties.
Rousseau, the intellectual father of communism as much as Marx, was a fountain of horrible ideas. He was also the intellectual inspiration for the French Revolution, and whose ideas are also now the Official American Creed, as announced by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris this year. (Obama claimed that “we” also believe in the French Revolutionary slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”). Among Rousseau’s main ideas, as embraced by Obama, the leader of American liberalism, are: man must give up all of his natural rights to the sovereign power; government will grant us whatever civil rights we are to have; the sovereign power must be absolute, indivisible, and inalienable; government should prohibit economic inequality, no matter what its source; being a “virtuous citizen”means having absolute loyalty to the state; children should be indoctrinated into this statist idolatry as early as possible; the state should replace the parents with regard to education; governmental power should be centralized in the executive branch; we should pretend that all government action is the result of carrying out the wishes of “the whole people”; and “truth” is determined by “the majority will,” as defined by a political elite. Marx agreed with all of this, and “departs from Rousseau merely in his ideas about what political action is necessary to resolve the problems caused by private property.”
Mullen also provides a concise overview of the dramatically-different philosophy of natural rights that informs the true American creed, beginning with the ideas of John Locke. He explains how “Locke’s view of man in nature departs from both conservatives and liberals on every substantive point.” The latter chapters of the book are more historical than philosophical, describing how America was transformed by the late nineteenth century from a more-or-less Lockean/libertarian society with minimal government, to a centralized, conservative/mercantilist empire in the spirit of Hobbes and Burke, with the “Civil War” as the great turning point. In a promised sequel, Mullen will write about how the centralized mercantilist empire of Lincoln was eventually infiltrated if not replaced by the socialist/egalitarian ideas of Marx and Rousseau. Both sets of ideas reject the fundamental American creed that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the sole purpose of government to secure these rights.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/thomas-dilorenzo/congressional-conservatives-dangerous/
By Thomas DiLorenzo
The late Senator Everett Dirksen once said “there’s not a dimes worth of difference” between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The subsequent four decades since he made that remark have certainly proven his prescience. The current “Paul Ryan budget,” which seems to have been written, line by line, by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, is slam-dunk proof of Senator Dirksen’s observation.
Thomas Mullen has just published a new book, Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From?, that goes a long way toward explaining why this is. Mullen traces the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism and “liberalism” (in the American sense of the word) and shows that they both contradict the true American creed, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, that the sole purpose of government is to protect our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The two most influential conservative authors who have shaped the thinking of British and American conservatives, Mullen argues, are Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke. Hobbes believed that man’s natural state was “a state of war” of “everyone against everyone.” This, says Mullen, is “the basis for all conservative thinking. Not only does man need a government, but one powerful enough to ‘keep him in awe’”. It gets worse. Hobbes also believed that “because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone . . . it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to everything, even to one another’s body.” (Hobbes’s own words). This of course is the exact opposite of the American creed of natural rights to life, liberty and property, including one’s own body.
This is why conservatives believe that only government can keep “our dark nature at bay,” writes Mullen. It is why they typically support law enforcement, no matter how inept or criminal the enterprise of policing becomes. “Rarely will you see conservatives side with an alleged victim of police brutality,” he writes.
It was Hobbes who also wrote that “subjects” can never change the form of their government, no matter what. “This completely contradicts the [American]Creed’s assertion [in the Declaration of Independence] that the people have the right to alter or abolish their government and replace it with another,” writes Mullen. Lincoln was obviously a Hobbesian, since this idea was at the heart of his new and fanciful theory of the “perpetual union” held together by the threat of murdering hundreds of thousands of dissenters.
Edmund Burke agreed with this notion that “the people are permanently bound by the contract made by their ancestors.” He also believed that rights to life, liberty and property were not natural or God-given, but granted to us by politicians. That is why conservative politicians like Rick Santorum, for example, went on NPR to mock the idea that government “shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom . . . shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.”
Burke believed that “our rights” were not just government grants, but also the result of “longstanding traditions.” Consequently, modern conservatives rarely, if ever, criticize let alone repudiate such things as FDR’s New Deal. Conservative Newt Gingrich even once hailed FDR as the greatest president of the twentieth century. “Some day, conservatives will defend Obamacare,” Mullen quotes Tom Woods as saying. For conservatives, “to challenge the sovereign power, regardless of how objectionably it is wielded, is to endanger all of civil society.” This helps explain the extreme hatred that conservatives have displayed toward Yours Truly in particular, and LewRockwell.com in general. “Conservatives from Hobbes to Burke to Rick Santorum believe government power should regulate all areas of life,” Mullen accurately concludes.
Conservatives are also centralizers, following Hobbes’s belief that “the sovereign power should never be divided.” They are therefore enemies of another important part of the American Creed, federalism or states’ rights.
Conservatives in general also embrace various forms of mercantilism as their preferred economic policy. They will support competititon, but then they call for government intervention to make sure “the right people” win. This is because they incorrectly view economic activity as one big “war” with winners and losers. They tend to be ignorant of the truth about voluntary market exchange being mutually advantageous.
“You can hear Hobbes every day in neoconservative rhetoric” warning of the “instability” in foreign countries, writes Mullen, and of the alleged “need” for the U.S. military to intervene everywhere on earth where such “instability” exists. We heard this when George W. Bush said we need to “fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here,” and is also the argument that was made to “justify” the Korean and Vietnamese wars. From all of this comes the truly totalitarian idea of “American exceptionalism,” writes Mullen.
“Liberals,” on the other hand, are inspired (whether they recognize it or not) primarily by Karl Marx and Jean-Jacques-Rousseau. “[I]t was Rousseau and Marx who laid the modern foundation for liberalism.” Hatred of “inequality” is what animates all “liberals.” Whereas socialists “seek to abolish private property,” liberals want to “heavily regulate and redistribute it.” The latter are fascists, in other words, no different from conservatives, really.
The denial of the thousands of natural human differences, and their compulsion to have the state force “equality” on everyone, explains modern “liberals.” It even explains, says Mullen, why liberals even “insist on positive laws that prohibit anyone from refusing to associate with homosexuals.” He cites the case of the Christian couple who owned a bakery and refused to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. Liberals naturally sought legal penalties.
Rousseau, the intellectual father of communism as much as Marx, was a fountain of horrible ideas. He was also the intellectual inspiration for the French Revolution, and whose ideas are also now the Official American Creed, as announced by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Paris this year. (Obama claimed that “we” also believe in the French Revolutionary slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”). Among Rousseau’s main ideas, as embraced by Obama, the leader of American liberalism, are: man must give up all of his natural rights to the sovereign power; government will grant us whatever civil rights we are to have; the sovereign power must be absolute, indivisible, and inalienable; government should prohibit economic inequality, no matter what its source; being a “virtuous citizen”means having absolute loyalty to the state; children should be indoctrinated into this statist idolatry as early as possible; the state should replace the parents with regard to education; governmental power should be centralized in the executive branch; we should pretend that all government action is the result of carrying out the wishes of “the whole people”; and “truth” is determined by “the majority will,” as defined by a political elite. Marx agreed with all of this, and “departs from Rousseau merely in his ideas about what political action is necessary to resolve the problems caused by private property.”
Mullen also provides a concise overview of the dramatically-different philosophy of natural rights that informs the true American creed, beginning with the ideas of John Locke. He explains how “Locke’s view of man in nature departs from both conservatives and liberals on every substantive point.” The latter chapters of the book are more historical than philosophical, describing how America was transformed by the late nineteenth century from a more-or-less Lockean/libertarian society with minimal government, to a centralized, conservative/mercantilist empire in the spirit of Hobbes and Burke, with the “Civil War” as the great turning point. In a promised sequel, Mullen will write about how the centralized mercantilist empire of Lincoln was eventually infiltrated if not replaced by the socialist/egalitarian ideas of Marx and Rousseau. Both sets of ideas reject the fundamental American creed that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the sole purpose of government to secure these rights.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/thomas-dilorenzo/congressional-conservatives-dangerous/
"As Jeb Bush lays struggles and plan to steel the nomination from the convention, we must ask ourselves, “do we really want another Bush in office? Why aren’t these people in jail?"
DESTINY AND POWER: The American Whitewash of George Herbert Walker Bush
By Roger Stone
John Meacham’s “biography” of our 41st President George H.W. Bush, “DESTINY AND POWER” comes in at a whopping 864 pages and a wrist snapping 3.4 pounds and it’s pure whitewash. It ignores inconvenient historical facts because it is an authorized biography. Meacham seems oblivious that the goofy, patrician manner and weird syntaxes that makes him look like a bumbler hide a man of steely ambition, ruthlessness, entitlement and duplicity.
Fortunately, my own book Jeb and the Bush Crime Family will be released Jan 26th and will expose what a tool of the power elite “Historian” Meachem is and there is a whole genre of books that are authorized profiles that stress the Bush Family “integrity ” and “honor. All are vehicles in which the Bush to cover up the truth about the House of Bush. Destiny and Power is one of those
Meacham ignores declassified Federal Documents showing Bush was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 staying steps from Dealey Plaza and lied to the FBI to create an alibi when he said for 30 years he “couldn’t remember where he was.” Not in Meacham’s book.
Meacham omits stone walling of the Iran-Contra Investigators on the trail of cocaine and arms smuggling he over saw a Vice President and chair of a Secret Task Force to illegally raise money for Nicguaran Rebels. Bush, on advice of Presidential Legal Counsel Boydon Grey creepy son of Eugenics Guru and funder Gordon Grey, refused to be questioned or turn over Documents. Not in Meacham’s book.
CIA Drug Smuggler and Pilot Barry Seal was murdered 3 days after threatening to expose Bush Sons Jeb and W. involvement with drug smuggling. Seal is gunned down with Bush 41 private phone number in his wallet. Not in Meacham’s book.
There is no mention of his racist support of eugenics, Prescott Bush financing the armament of Hitler or owning condoling interest in a steel mill in Germany that used skave labor from Auschwitz death camp. Again not in Meachem’s book.
The Bush even paid for a vanity biography of Prescott Bush “Duty, Honor Country” airbrushed his Nazi business dealings out of the picture. Author Mickey Herskowitz should be ashamed. The Feds seisong Prescott’s Bank for trading with the Nazi’s is not mentioned.
Meachen miss Poppy’s his obsessive quest for the Vice presidency, which he felt was his “birthright” that he could advance from. Bush made attempts to get on the ticket in 1968, 1972, 1974, 1976 and 1980.
Far from timid, he pulled the strings behind many of the dark events which have come to haunt us. Yet Bush maintained he was “out of the loop.” Never the one to take responsibility, never the one to accept blame, Bush CIA pal Felix Rodriquez ran the loop. Bush and CIA Director Bill Casey were the loop.
Destiny and Power, reads more like an autobiography than a biography unless biographies are limited to relating the facts only as approved of by the subject. In this massive self serving account, is a deliberate exclusion of many of duplicitous plots and lies. Like the one about his fighter plane catching on fire after being hit. Poppy dashes out and parachutes to safety. Fact show Bush bailed prematurely without warning his comrades who he left to die. The last part is historical fact. The true story is one of cowardice and self-preservation sold to people a war time bravery in endless 8 mm TV commercials of a smiling Poppy being scooped at see. Meacham buys the Bush spin he’s a hero.
When I realized that some of the story had come from Bush’s own personal diaries, I should have realized that Bush wouldn’t have written down anything that would make him look bad or could incriminate him. I wonder how, as a journalist and respected author, John Meacham produced such an obviously sanitized and unbalanced bio.
There is no mention of the family racist support of Eugenics or Planned Parenthood and Population Control for lessor races. One never gets the impression that so many politicians of the era had of George H W Bush: that he was weak, limp, soft spoken and timid.
That perception, perpetuated by Bush, could be the greatest con of recent times. Driven, or ganized and ruthless he pulled the strings behind many of the events which have come to haunt us. Yet Bush maintained he was “out of the loop.” Never the one to take responsibility as a good CIA man.
Destiny and Power is a masterwork. A brilliantly concocted script written only to praise Mr. Bush. Destiny and Power has garnered critical acclaim: a New York Times Best Seller and one of the top ten books of this year. The book is a fraud! Look who love it – Establishment elites Walter Issacson, and LBJ punch Doris Kearns Goodwin who was well acquitted with “Jumbo”. Mike Beschloss jumps on. These people hide the history of our country. Meachem hides it too in giving us the Bush family version of events while ignoring historical facts.
Meachem, like Bill O’Reilly misses much about the backstory of the Reagan Assassination and Bush ties to it- the second gunman , Bush’s secret effort to set Reagan up in Iran Contra and later have him declared non-compis mentis and seize power.
Old man Bush profiteering at Carlyle taking Saudi pay-offs and connections the Bin Ladens? Sanitized in Meacham’s book.
As old man Bush nears the end of his life, it seems not to be the end of the Bush dynasty. Jeb’s story is also one of privledge, shady connections, get-rich-quick schemes, using the Governorship to make millions taking post Governorship payoff’s from Wall Street for lucrative state actions. As Jeb Bush lays struggles and plan to steel the nomination from the convention, we must ask ourselves, “do we really want another Bush in office? Why aren’t these people in jail?
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/roger-stone/truth-poppy-bush/
By Roger Stone
John Meacham’s “biography” of our 41st President George H.W. Bush, “DESTINY AND POWER” comes in at a whopping 864 pages and a wrist snapping 3.4 pounds and it’s pure whitewash. It ignores inconvenient historical facts because it is an authorized biography. Meacham seems oblivious that the goofy, patrician manner and weird syntaxes that makes him look like a bumbler hide a man of steely ambition, ruthlessness, entitlement and duplicity.
Fortunately, my own book Jeb and the Bush Crime Family will be released Jan 26th and will expose what a tool of the power elite “Historian” Meachem is and there is a whole genre of books that are authorized profiles that stress the Bush Family “integrity ” and “honor. All are vehicles in which the Bush to cover up the truth about the House of Bush. Destiny and Power is one of those
Meacham ignores declassified Federal Documents showing Bush was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 staying steps from Dealey Plaza and lied to the FBI to create an alibi when he said for 30 years he “couldn’t remember where he was.” Not in Meacham’s book.
Meacham omits stone walling of the Iran-Contra Investigators on the trail of cocaine and arms smuggling he over saw a Vice President and chair of a Secret Task Force to illegally raise money for Nicguaran Rebels. Bush, on advice of Presidential Legal Counsel Boydon Grey creepy son of Eugenics Guru and funder Gordon Grey, refused to be questioned or turn over Documents. Not in Meacham’s book.
CIA Drug Smuggler and Pilot Barry Seal was murdered 3 days after threatening to expose Bush Sons Jeb and W. involvement with drug smuggling. Seal is gunned down with Bush 41 private phone number in his wallet. Not in Meacham’s book.
There is no mention of his racist support of eugenics, Prescott Bush financing the armament of Hitler or owning condoling interest in a steel mill in Germany that used skave labor from Auschwitz death camp. Again not in Meachem’s book.
The Bush even paid for a vanity biography of Prescott Bush “Duty, Honor Country” airbrushed his Nazi business dealings out of the picture. Author Mickey Herskowitz should be ashamed. The Feds seisong Prescott’s Bank for trading with the Nazi’s is not mentioned.
Meachen miss Poppy’s his obsessive quest for the Vice presidency, which he felt was his “birthright” that he could advance from. Bush made attempts to get on the ticket in 1968, 1972, 1974, 1976 and 1980.
Far from timid, he pulled the strings behind many of the dark events which have come to haunt us. Yet Bush maintained he was “out of the loop.” Never the one to take responsibility, never the one to accept blame, Bush CIA pal Felix Rodriquez ran the loop. Bush and CIA Director Bill Casey were the loop.
Destiny and Power, reads more like an autobiography than a biography unless biographies are limited to relating the facts only as approved of by the subject. In this massive self serving account, is a deliberate exclusion of many of duplicitous plots and lies. Like the one about his fighter plane catching on fire after being hit. Poppy dashes out and parachutes to safety. Fact show Bush bailed prematurely without warning his comrades who he left to die. The last part is historical fact. The true story is one of cowardice and self-preservation sold to people a war time bravery in endless 8 mm TV commercials of a smiling Poppy being scooped at see. Meacham buys the Bush spin he’s a hero.
When I realized that some of the story had come from Bush’s own personal diaries, I should have realized that Bush wouldn’t have written down anything that would make him look bad or could incriminate him. I wonder how, as a journalist and respected author, John Meacham produced such an obviously sanitized and unbalanced bio.
There is no mention of the family racist support of Eugenics or Planned Parenthood and Population Control for lessor races. One never gets the impression that so many politicians of the era had of George H W Bush: that he was weak, limp, soft spoken and timid.
That perception, perpetuated by Bush, could be the greatest con of recent times. Driven, or ganized and ruthless he pulled the strings behind many of the events which have come to haunt us. Yet Bush maintained he was “out of the loop.” Never the one to take responsibility as a good CIA man.
Destiny and Power is a masterwork. A brilliantly concocted script written only to praise Mr. Bush. Destiny and Power has garnered critical acclaim: a New York Times Best Seller and one of the top ten books of this year. The book is a fraud! Look who love it – Establishment elites Walter Issacson, and LBJ punch Doris Kearns Goodwin who was well acquitted with “Jumbo”. Mike Beschloss jumps on. These people hide the history of our country. Meachem hides it too in giving us the Bush family version of events while ignoring historical facts.
Meachem, like Bill O’Reilly misses much about the backstory of the Reagan Assassination and Bush ties to it- the second gunman , Bush’s secret effort to set Reagan up in Iran Contra and later have him declared non-compis mentis and seize power.
Old man Bush profiteering at Carlyle taking Saudi pay-offs and connections the Bin Ladens? Sanitized in Meacham’s book.
As old man Bush nears the end of his life, it seems not to be the end of the Bush dynasty. Jeb’s story is also one of privledge, shady connections, get-rich-quick schemes, using the Governorship to make millions taking post Governorship payoff’s from Wall Street for lucrative state actions. As Jeb Bush lays struggles and plan to steel the nomination from the convention, we must ask ourselves, “do we really want another Bush in office? Why aren’t these people in jail?
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/roger-stone/truth-poppy-bush/
"Handing out vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money is the way the federal government has expanded its power far beyond the powers granted by the Constitution — thereby limiting the freedom of individuals, localities and states. Washington is essentially buying up our freedom with our own money, taken in taxes."
The Busybody Left
By Thomas Sowell
The political left has been trying to run other people’s lives for centuries. So we should not be surprised to see the Obama administration now trying to force neighborhoods across America to have the mix of people the government wants them to have.
There are not enough poor people living in middle class neighborhoods to suit the political left. Not enough blacks in white neighborhoods. Not enough Hispanics here, not enough Asians there.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the federal government the power to dictate such things. But places that do not mix and match people the way Washington wants them to can lose all sorts of federal money they currently receive under numerous programs.
Handing out vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money is the way the federal government has expanded its power far beyond the powers granted by the Constitution — thereby limiting the freedom of individuals, localities and states. Washington is essentially buying up our freedom with our own money, taken in taxes.
What makes this latest political crusade so ridiculous and so dangerous is that people have never been mixed and matched at random, either in the United States or in other countries around the world, or in any period of history.
We can see blacks and whites living in different neighborhoods, but many people who look the same to the naked eye also sort themselves out. Moreover, neither blacks nor whites are living at random within their own respective neighborhoods.
The upscale neighborhood called Sugar Hill in Harlem, where I delivered groceries as a teenager, was very different from the neighborhood where I lived in a tenement.
White neighborhoods also sorted themselves out. A man who grew up in Chicago said, “Tell me a man’s last name and I will tell you where he lives.” Studies of ethnic concentrations in Chicago have backed up his claim.
Back when the Lower East Side of New York was a predominantly Jewish area during the era of mass immigration from Europe, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in a different part of the Lower East Side from where Polish Jews or Romanian Jews lived.
And German Jews lived uptown.
It was the same story in Italian neighborhoods. Immigrants from Rome were not scattered at random among immigrants from Naples or Sicily. Moreover, this was not peculiar to New York.
The same clustering of people from particular parts of Italy could be found in cities across the United States, as well as in Italian communities in Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney and other places around the world.
The very same pattern could be found among Germans, Chinese, Lebanese and other peoples living in other countries. People of different ages, different incomes or different lifestyles likewise tend to sort themselves out.
Nevertheless the busybody left has launched a political crusade to make communities across America present a tableau that matches the preconceptions of their betters.
Nor are the true believers deterred by the failures and counterproductive consequences of their previous social crusades, such as busing children to distant schools to mix and match them with children from different racial, economic or social backgrounds.
The theory was that this would improve the education of all — through the magic of “diversity” — and promote greater understanding among different races and classes. In practice, however, compulsory busing of children to mix and match them produced more racial polarization and more educational problems.
Undaunted by reality, the left moved on to try something similar in the housing markets, by placing low-income housing projects in middle class neighborhoods and by giving housing subsidies to individual low-income families to go live in neighborhoods where they could not afford to live otherwise.
The counterproductive consequences of these efforts in the housing markets have only spurred on the busybodies of the left to try harder to force people to live their lives according to the preconceptions of the left, rather than according to their own direct personal experiences and preferences.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/thomas-sowell/totalitarian-pc/
By Thomas Sowell
The political left has been trying to run other people’s lives for centuries. So we should not be surprised to see the Obama administration now trying to force neighborhoods across America to have the mix of people the government wants them to have.
There are not enough poor people living in middle class neighborhoods to suit the political left. Not enough blacks in white neighborhoods. Not enough Hispanics here, not enough Asians there.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the federal government the power to dictate such things. But places that do not mix and match people the way Washington wants them to can lose all sorts of federal money they currently receive under numerous programs.
Handing out vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money is the way the federal government has expanded its power far beyond the powers granted by the Constitution — thereby limiting the freedom of individuals, localities and states. Washington is essentially buying up our freedom with our own money, taken in taxes.
What makes this latest political crusade so ridiculous and so dangerous is that people have never been mixed and matched at random, either in the United States or in other countries around the world, or in any period of history.
We can see blacks and whites living in different neighborhoods, but many people who look the same to the naked eye also sort themselves out. Moreover, neither blacks nor whites are living at random within their own respective neighborhoods.
The upscale neighborhood called Sugar Hill in Harlem, where I delivered groceries as a teenager, was very different from the neighborhood where I lived in a tenement.
White neighborhoods also sorted themselves out. A man who grew up in Chicago said, “Tell me a man’s last name and I will tell you where he lives.” Studies of ethnic concentrations in Chicago have backed up his claim.
Back when the Lower East Side of New York was a predominantly Jewish area during the era of mass immigration from Europe, Hungarian Jews lived clustered together in a different part of the Lower East Side from where Polish Jews or Romanian Jews lived.
And German Jews lived uptown.
It was the same story in Italian neighborhoods. Immigrants from Rome were not scattered at random among immigrants from Naples or Sicily. Moreover, this was not peculiar to New York.
The same clustering of people from particular parts of Italy could be found in cities across the United States, as well as in Italian communities in Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney and other places around the world.
The very same pattern could be found among Germans, Chinese, Lebanese and other peoples living in other countries. People of different ages, different incomes or different lifestyles likewise tend to sort themselves out.
Nevertheless the busybody left has launched a political crusade to make communities across America present a tableau that matches the preconceptions of their betters.
Nor are the true believers deterred by the failures and counterproductive consequences of their previous social crusades, such as busing children to distant schools to mix and match them with children from different racial, economic or social backgrounds.
The theory was that this would improve the education of all — through the magic of “diversity” — and promote greater understanding among different races and classes. In practice, however, compulsory busing of children to mix and match them produced more racial polarization and more educational problems.
Undaunted by reality, the left moved on to try something similar in the housing markets, by placing low-income housing projects in middle class neighborhoods and by giving housing subsidies to individual low-income families to go live in neighborhoods where they could not afford to live otherwise.
The counterproductive consequences of these efforts in the housing markets have only spurred on the busybodies of the left to try harder to force people to live their lives according to the preconceptions of the left, rather than according to their own direct personal experiences and preferences.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/thomas-sowell/totalitarian-pc/
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Read that book in one day...
How to Read an Entire Book in a Single Day
Patrick Allan
You’ve been putting off reading that book for weeks, and you’re supposed to have read it all by tomorrow. Whether you’re cramming for school, or trying to avoid looking like a lazy bum in your book club, don’t lose hope. You can power through that tome without forgetting everything and coming away with nothing.
Reading an entire book in a matter of hours may seem daunting, but it all comes down to simple math. The average adult reads around 200-400 words per minute. The average novel ranges between 60,000 and 100,000 words total. If your reading speed is right in the middle of the pack at 300 words per minute, and you’re reading a middle-of-the-pack novel at around 80,000 words, you’ll be able to knock it out in around five hours or less.
That might seem like a lot, but it’s totally possible. And you can do it without any skimming or speed reading trickery, which can be bad when it comes to truly absorbing information. For the most part, it’s possible to read at your usual pace, absorb information at your brain’s preferred rate, and all you have to do is buckle down, make the time, and get started as soon as possible.
Find the Perfect Reading Location
Distraction is your enemy. Anything that can pull your attention away from your book is going to increase the amount of time you need to finish. The internet, sounds, screens, games, pets, toys, friends, and random people you don’t know are all trying to pull you away from those words. Even as I write this, sitting in the airport, I’m constantly catching myself people watching and losing focus.
Separate yourself from everything. Lock yourself in a room with a pair of earplugs, go to the most uninhabited spot in your library, throw down a blanket in a low-traffic section of the park. Heck, if you have no other place to go, hide away in your car (as long as it’s not too hot). Think of how much solitude you’ll need, then double it. If you can’t get away from distracting sounds, reach for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, or do what Emerson Spartz, owner and operator of the Harry Potter fan site Mugglenet, suggests and listen to white noise. According to Spartz finds that listening to white noise helps him keep focused, and even helps him read a little faster...
Read the rest here:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-read-an-entire-book-in-a-single-day-1749070044?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_twitter&utm_source=lifehacker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Patrick Allan
You’ve been putting off reading that book for weeks, and you’re supposed to have read it all by tomorrow. Whether you’re cramming for school, or trying to avoid looking like a lazy bum in your book club, don’t lose hope. You can power through that tome without forgetting everything and coming away with nothing.
Reading an entire book in a matter of hours may seem daunting, but it all comes down to simple math. The average adult reads around 200-400 words per minute. The average novel ranges between 60,000 and 100,000 words total. If your reading speed is right in the middle of the pack at 300 words per minute, and you’re reading a middle-of-the-pack novel at around 80,000 words, you’ll be able to knock it out in around five hours or less.
That might seem like a lot, but it’s totally possible. And you can do it without any skimming or speed reading trickery, which can be bad when it comes to truly absorbing information. For the most part, it’s possible to read at your usual pace, absorb information at your brain’s preferred rate, and all you have to do is buckle down, make the time, and get started as soon as possible.
Find the Perfect Reading Location
Distraction is your enemy. Anything that can pull your attention away from your book is going to increase the amount of time you need to finish. The internet, sounds, screens, games, pets, toys, friends, and random people you don’t know are all trying to pull you away from those words. Even as I write this, sitting in the airport, I’m constantly catching myself people watching and losing focus.
Separate yourself from everything. Lock yourself in a room with a pair of earplugs, go to the most uninhabited spot in your library, throw down a blanket in a low-traffic section of the park. Heck, if you have no other place to go, hide away in your car (as long as it’s not too hot). Think of how much solitude you’ll need, then double it. If you can’t get away from distracting sounds, reach for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, or do what Emerson Spartz, owner and operator of the Harry Potter fan site Mugglenet, suggests and listen to white noise. According to Spartz finds that listening to white noise helps him keep focused, and even helps him read a little faster...
Read the rest here:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-read-an-entire-book-in-a-single-day-1749070044?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_twitter&utm_source=lifehacker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
"So why do we even have a Republican Party? They always just go along with pretty much whatever the Democrats want anyway. Why shouldn’t we just disband the Republican Party and let the Democrats completely run things? How would Washington D.C. be any different if the Republicans didn’t even exist?"
It’s Official: Over A Trillion Dollars A Year Will Be Added To The Debt During Obama’s Presidency
By Michael Snyder
Under Barack Obama, the U.S. national debt has risen from $10,626,877,048,913.08 on January 20th, 2009 to $18,795,033,928,275.59 on December 21st, 2015. That means that the debt that we are passing on to future generations has increased by 8.16 trillion dollars since Barack Obama was inaugurated. There is still a little more than a year to go in Obama’s presidency, and it is already guaranteed that Obama will add more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt during his presidency. In fact, when you do the math, we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day. It is a crime of a magnitude that is almost unimaginable, and at this point it is mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off all of this debt. To say that we are in trouble would be a massive understatement.
And of course not all of the blame goes to Obama. The Republicans have had control of the House of Representatives for all but two years while Obama has been in the White House, and they have gone along with all of this reckless spending. Without the approval of the House, Obama could not spend a single penny, but the Republicans have consistently chosen not to stand up to him. In fact, the Republicans in Congress just approved another massive 1.2 trillion dollar spending bill that essentially gave the Democrats every single thing that they wanted. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi even admitted that the Republicans “were willing to concede so much” during the negotiations.
So why do we even have a Republican Party? They always just go along with pretty much whatever the Democrats want anyway. Why shouldn’t we just disband the Republican Party and let the Democrats completely run things? How would Washington D.C. be any different if the Republicans didn’t even exist?
At this point, even Rush Limbaugh is completely disgusted with the Republican Party…
I have a headline here from the Washington Times: “White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle.” That headline’s a misnomer. There was never a battle. None of this was opposed. The Republican Party didn’t stand up to any of it, and the die has been cast for a long time on this. I know many of you are dispirited, depressed, angry, combination of all of that. But, folks, there was no other way this could go. Because two years ago when the Republican Party declared they would never do anything that would shut down the government and they would not impeach Obama, there were no obstacles in Obama’s way and there were no obstacles in the way of the Democrat Party.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Obamacare?
That didn’t happen.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Planned Parenthood?
That didn’t happen.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Obama’s refugee program?
That didn’t happen.
In this new spending deal, the Republicans got nothing. It was a sham, a farce and a total insult to the American people. Here is more from Rush Limbaugh…
It fully funds Planned Parenthood. That, to me, is unforgivable, with everything now known about what goes on behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood, and that the federal government, led by a Republican Party, sees fit to pay for it. It is beyond comprehension, and it is a total squandering of moral authority to fully fund the butchery at Planned Parenthood. This spending bill fully pays for Obama’s refugee plans, fully. This spending bill, this budget bill quadruples the number of visas Obama wants for foreign workers. This is even a slap at American union workers. Not the leaders. The union leaders seem to be in favor of it, but blue-collar people, known as working people, have been sold down the river along with everybody else here.
This spending bill even fully pays for every dime asked for by Obama on all of this idiocy that’s tied up into climate change. Everything Obama wanted, everything he asked for, he got. You go down the list of things, it’s there.
Even after watching all of the undercover Planned Parenthood videos that came out over the past year, the Republicans in Congress still voted to fund the harvesting and sale of body parts from aborted babies.
And surveys have found that the American people support the continued funding of Planned Parenthood by about a 2 to 1 margin. After everything that we have seen, the vast majority of Americans still want to continue giving those butchers hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year.
No wonder so many people are comparing America to Nazi Germany these days. We truly have become an exceedingly wicked nation.
We like to think that we are an “example” for the rest of the planet, but in reality the only example that we are is a bad one. Our guilt has been put on display for all the world to see, and yet we just continue to race toward even more evil.
Not only did the Republicans not defund Planned Parenthood, the truth is that not a single pro-life amendment of any sort even got into the bill thanks to Paul Ryan. The following comes from lifesitenews.com…
“The bill failed to include a single major pro-life policy rider, despite the requests of over 120 members of Congress and the disturbing revelations about Planned Parenthood brought to light this year,” said Congresswoman Diane Black, R-TN, who voted against the bill.
The House Freedom Caucus offered a series of amendments to the bill defunding Planned Parenthood, strengthening conscience protections for pro-life physicians and organizations, and ending all U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The House Rules Committee rejected these riders earlier this week, as Speaker Paul Ryan said he did not want conservative amendments added to the bill that would drive away his Democratic colleagues.
The committee also rejected an amendment to increase vetting of refugees who enter the United States from the terrorist hotbeds of Syria and Iraq, which had previously passed the House, with 47 Democrats adding strong bipartisan support.
Like I said, the Republicans completely capitulated, just like they always do.
Now the U.S. national debt is nearly double the size that it was just before the last financial crisis struck, and our leaders continue to borrow and spend as if there is no tomorrow.
Perhaps they have convinced themselves that there will never be any consequences for acting so foolishly.
Perhaps they believe that in the end everything will turn out okay somehow.
Perhaps they are able to rationalize the theft of more than a hundred million dollars an hour from future generations of Americans.
But nothing can erase what they have done to us. The promising future that our children and our grandchildren should have had has been completely wiped out, and the leading edge of the greatest economic crisis that any of us has ever known is now upon us.
If we had done things differently, things wouldn’t have had to turn out this way. But now the die is cast, and we are all going to pay a very high price for the mistakes that have been made in Washington.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/its-official-more-than-a-trillion-dollars-a-year-will-be-added-to-the-debt-during-obamas-presidency
By Michael Snyder
Under Barack Obama, the U.S. national debt has risen from $10,626,877,048,913.08 on January 20th, 2009 to $18,795,033,928,275.59 on December 21st, 2015. That means that the debt that we are passing on to future generations has increased by 8.16 trillion dollars since Barack Obama was inaugurated. There is still a little more than a year to go in Obama’s presidency, and it is already guaranteed that Obama will add more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt during his presidency. In fact, when you do the math, we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day. It is a crime of a magnitude that is almost unimaginable, and at this point it is mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off all of this debt. To say that we are in trouble would be a massive understatement.
And of course not all of the blame goes to Obama. The Republicans have had control of the House of Representatives for all but two years while Obama has been in the White House, and they have gone along with all of this reckless spending. Without the approval of the House, Obama could not spend a single penny, but the Republicans have consistently chosen not to stand up to him. In fact, the Republicans in Congress just approved another massive 1.2 trillion dollar spending bill that essentially gave the Democrats every single thing that they wanted. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi even admitted that the Republicans “were willing to concede so much” during the negotiations.
So why do we even have a Republican Party? They always just go along with pretty much whatever the Democrats want anyway. Why shouldn’t we just disband the Republican Party and let the Democrats completely run things? How would Washington D.C. be any different if the Republicans didn’t even exist?
At this point, even Rush Limbaugh is completely disgusted with the Republican Party…
I have a headline here from the Washington Times: “White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle.” That headline’s a misnomer. There was never a battle. None of this was opposed. The Republican Party didn’t stand up to any of it, and the die has been cast for a long time on this. I know many of you are dispirited, depressed, angry, combination of all of that. But, folks, there was no other way this could go. Because two years ago when the Republican Party declared they would never do anything that would shut down the government and they would not impeach Obama, there were no obstacles in Obama’s way and there were no obstacles in the way of the Democrat Party.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Obamacare?
That didn’t happen.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Planned Parenthood?
That didn’t happen.
Do you remember when Republican politicians were running around promising that they would defund Obama’s refugee program?
That didn’t happen.
In this new spending deal, the Republicans got nothing. It was a sham, a farce and a total insult to the American people. Here is more from Rush Limbaugh…
It fully funds Planned Parenthood. That, to me, is unforgivable, with everything now known about what goes on behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood, and that the federal government, led by a Republican Party, sees fit to pay for it. It is beyond comprehension, and it is a total squandering of moral authority to fully fund the butchery at Planned Parenthood. This spending bill fully pays for Obama’s refugee plans, fully. This spending bill, this budget bill quadruples the number of visas Obama wants for foreign workers. This is even a slap at American union workers. Not the leaders. The union leaders seem to be in favor of it, but blue-collar people, known as working people, have been sold down the river along with everybody else here.
This spending bill even fully pays for every dime asked for by Obama on all of this idiocy that’s tied up into climate change. Everything Obama wanted, everything he asked for, he got. You go down the list of things, it’s there.
Even after watching all of the undercover Planned Parenthood videos that came out over the past year, the Republicans in Congress still voted to fund the harvesting and sale of body parts from aborted babies.
And surveys have found that the American people support the continued funding of Planned Parenthood by about a 2 to 1 margin. After everything that we have seen, the vast majority of Americans still want to continue giving those butchers hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year.
No wonder so many people are comparing America to Nazi Germany these days. We truly have become an exceedingly wicked nation.
We like to think that we are an “example” for the rest of the planet, but in reality the only example that we are is a bad one. Our guilt has been put on display for all the world to see, and yet we just continue to race toward even more evil.
Not only did the Republicans not defund Planned Parenthood, the truth is that not a single pro-life amendment of any sort even got into the bill thanks to Paul Ryan. The following comes from lifesitenews.com…
“The bill failed to include a single major pro-life policy rider, despite the requests of over 120 members of Congress and the disturbing revelations about Planned Parenthood brought to light this year,” said Congresswoman Diane Black, R-TN, who voted against the bill.
The House Freedom Caucus offered a series of amendments to the bill defunding Planned Parenthood, strengthening conscience protections for pro-life physicians and organizations, and ending all U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The House Rules Committee rejected these riders earlier this week, as Speaker Paul Ryan said he did not want conservative amendments added to the bill that would drive away his Democratic colleagues.
The committee also rejected an amendment to increase vetting of refugees who enter the United States from the terrorist hotbeds of Syria and Iraq, which had previously passed the House, with 47 Democrats adding strong bipartisan support.
Like I said, the Republicans completely capitulated, just like they always do.
Now the U.S. national debt is nearly double the size that it was just before the last financial crisis struck, and our leaders continue to borrow and spend as if there is no tomorrow.
Perhaps they have convinced themselves that there will never be any consequences for acting so foolishly.
Perhaps they believe that in the end everything will turn out okay somehow.
Perhaps they are able to rationalize the theft of more than a hundred million dollars an hour from future generations of Americans.
But nothing can erase what they have done to us. The promising future that our children and our grandchildren should have had has been completely wiped out, and the leading edge of the greatest economic crisis that any of us has ever known is now upon us.
If we had done things differently, things wouldn’t have had to turn out this way. But now the die is cast, and we are all going to pay a very high price for the mistakes that have been made in Washington.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/its-official-more-than-a-trillion-dollars-a-year-will-be-added-to-the-debt-during-obamas-presidency
Free speech = hate crime...
Merely speaking out against Planned Parenthood may soon get you arrested for thought crimes
by: Daniel Barker
In the wake of the recent Planned Parenthood clinic shooting in Colorado Springs, leftist rhetoric has reached a fever pitch. Liberal media outlets, pundits and activists want to criminalize free speech regarding abortion, and are now labeling those who speak out against Planned Parenthood as "violent" or as "terrorists" – and on equal par with the shooter himself.
No sane person would condone the shooting deaths at the clinic, but to label all anti-abortion sentiment and opposition to Planned Parenthood as "domestic terrorism" would be equally insane, right?
Insane or not, that's exactly what physician and medical journalist Jennifer Conti seems to be suggesting in an article she wrote for Slate:
"As news continues to unfold about Friday's Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, one thing is clear: Domestic terrorism remains unchecked, even on the day after Thanksgiving.
"To label this an isolated act of violence would be naive. In 2015 alone, there has been unprecedented harassment from anti-choice extremists, including most recently, a series of slanderous manipulated videos used to attack Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue donation programs. And now this."
In the second paragraph, Conti clearly equates "anti-choice" activism with violence. There has not been an attack on an abortion clinic since 2009, and so the claim that this is not an "isolated act of violence" is essentially the same as saying that any anti-abortion activism is a violent act.
The reality is that this was an isolated act of violence. No amount of obfuscation on the part of the leftist media can alter that fact.
Free speech = hate crime?
But it clearly seems to be the goal of liberals to classify anyone who speaks out against abortion as guilty of having committed a hate crime.
As Alex Thomas wrote in an article for Intellihub.com:
"Domestic terrorism is now being redefined as speech that liberals do not agree with and if you do not go along with this sort of new age thought control then you must hate women and want to kill people.
"Americans throughout the country now find themselves at a crossroads where their first amendment protected speech is now being redefined in major media outlets as actual terrorism in a disgusting attempt at silencing ALL criticism of abortion."
And if you think Jennifer Conti's article for Slate was an "isolated incident, " take a look at this YouTube video in which a CNN reporter also refers to the shooting as "the latest in a string of attacks on abortion providing facilities or on doctors who work with them."
https://youtu.be/NvOBXs-MVPI
It's obvious that these types of news reports and articles are designed to give the impression that these clinics are under constant attack, while the truth is that in the 15 years preceding the Colorado Springs shooting incident, only one person was killed in abortion clinic violence.
While there are undoubtedly many conspiracy theorists who will interpret this shooting incident as a 'false flag' attack designed only to demonize the anti-abortion movement, while simultaneously undermining our Second Amendment rights, I won't go that far.
What I will say is this: although I believe this isolated incident was the work of a deranged individual who happens to identify with the anti-abortion cause, the leftist media has seized on the opportunity to further their cause.
"Never let a serious crisis go to waste," as the liberals are so fond of saying.
The practice of labeling dissenters as terrorists has become frighteningly common. In case you haven't noticed, the current American government policy is to marginalize and criminalize those who publicly and privately oppose its agenda.
And the list of "potential terrorists" has officially expanded to include veterans, preppers, Christians, gun owners and much of what used to be considered normal society.
If the trend continues, we may soon find ourselves being arrested for our opinions – unless, of course, they happen to reflect those of our authoritarian masters. ...
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052397_planned_parenthood_free_speech_hate_crimes.html#ixzz3v3ERsJ8G
by: Daniel Barker
In the wake of the recent Planned Parenthood clinic shooting in Colorado Springs, leftist rhetoric has reached a fever pitch. Liberal media outlets, pundits and activists want to criminalize free speech regarding abortion, and are now labeling those who speak out against Planned Parenthood as "violent" or as "terrorists" – and on equal par with the shooter himself.
No sane person would condone the shooting deaths at the clinic, but to label all anti-abortion sentiment and opposition to Planned Parenthood as "domestic terrorism" would be equally insane, right?
Insane or not, that's exactly what physician and medical journalist Jennifer Conti seems to be suggesting in an article she wrote for Slate:
"As news continues to unfold about Friday's Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, one thing is clear: Domestic terrorism remains unchecked, even on the day after Thanksgiving.
"To label this an isolated act of violence would be naive. In 2015 alone, there has been unprecedented harassment from anti-choice extremists, including most recently, a series of slanderous manipulated videos used to attack Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue donation programs. And now this."
In the second paragraph, Conti clearly equates "anti-choice" activism with violence. There has not been an attack on an abortion clinic since 2009, and so the claim that this is not an "isolated act of violence" is essentially the same as saying that any anti-abortion activism is a violent act.
The reality is that this was an isolated act of violence. No amount of obfuscation on the part of the leftist media can alter that fact.
Free speech = hate crime?
But it clearly seems to be the goal of liberals to classify anyone who speaks out against abortion as guilty of having committed a hate crime.
As Alex Thomas wrote in an article for Intellihub.com:
"Domestic terrorism is now being redefined as speech that liberals do not agree with and if you do not go along with this sort of new age thought control then you must hate women and want to kill people.
"Americans throughout the country now find themselves at a crossroads where their first amendment protected speech is now being redefined in major media outlets as actual terrorism in a disgusting attempt at silencing ALL criticism of abortion."
And if you think Jennifer Conti's article for Slate was an "isolated incident, " take a look at this YouTube video in which a CNN reporter also refers to the shooting as "the latest in a string of attacks on abortion providing facilities or on doctors who work with them."
https://youtu.be/NvOBXs-MVPI
It's obvious that these types of news reports and articles are designed to give the impression that these clinics are under constant attack, while the truth is that in the 15 years preceding the Colorado Springs shooting incident, only one person was killed in abortion clinic violence.
While there are undoubtedly many conspiracy theorists who will interpret this shooting incident as a 'false flag' attack designed only to demonize the anti-abortion movement, while simultaneously undermining our Second Amendment rights, I won't go that far.
What I will say is this: although I believe this isolated incident was the work of a deranged individual who happens to identify with the anti-abortion cause, the leftist media has seized on the opportunity to further their cause.
"Never let a serious crisis go to waste," as the liberals are so fond of saying.
The practice of labeling dissenters as terrorists has become frighteningly common. In case you haven't noticed, the current American government policy is to marginalize and criminalize those who publicly and privately oppose its agenda.
And the list of "potential terrorists" has officially expanded to include veterans, preppers, Christians, gun owners and much of what used to be considered normal society.
If the trend continues, we may soon find ourselves being arrested for our opinions – unless, of course, they happen to reflect those of our authoritarian masters. ...
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052397_planned_parenthood_free_speech_hate_crimes.html#ixzz3v3ERsJ8G
"Our founders had Obama in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment..."
While Obama is protected by dozens of men with guns, he can't understand why Americans would want to protect themselves with those same guns
by: J. D. Heyes
Have you ever noticed that some of the most vehement anti-gun people are the very same ones who are surrounded and protected by them? That would be just about everyone in the Obama administration (and most Democrats in Congress).
In recent days we've been forced to endure another round of indignation from President Obama and other government anti-gunners following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. We've come to expect that from a president who, from the beginning of his first term, set in motion scheme after anti-gun scheme, all with the aim of hollowing out the meaning and importance of the Second Amendment.
Even an act of terrorism did not dissuade this president or those who represent him from politicizing their agenda.
As reported by Breitbart News and the Washington Times, White House spokesman Josh Earnest complained that too many Americans were flocking to gun stores in the wake of the California terrorist attack, in a nation already "awash in guns," describing the record gun purchases as "tragic."
"The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets, the more people go out and buy guns. That is both ironic and tragic," he said, as if he had the moral authority to even make such a claim.
Men protected by men with guns complaining about YOU protecting YOURSELF with guns
"In some cases these are individuals who believe that they need to buy a gun so that they can better protect themselves," he continued. "In some cases because it's Black Friday, they probably are going and purchasing a gift for a friend or a loved one who is a gun enthusiast. I'm just pointing out that there are already an astonishing number of guns on the streets of America and far too many innocent Americans who are being killed by them."
Earnest also said that he did not understand Americans' attraction to guns (maybe he should read some history on the founding of our nation?), or why they felt the need to buy so many.
And he lamented what he described as easy access to guns (maybe he should read the Constitution?).
"Ready access to guns and [the] proliferation of violent weapons of war has not led to fewer gun deaths," Earnest said. "It's tragic that even in the situation where we have lots of guns on the streets that lead to lots of innocent Americans being killed, that the response to that is that a whole lot more guns end up on the streets."
There is, of course, no evidence of that. In fact, based on the federal government's own statistics, guns (mostly handguns) are used two-to-one in suicides versus homicides. In fact, when you compare gun-related homicides to vehicular deaths, there are four times more fatalities from cars and trucks than firearm-caused homicides (about 32,000 vs about 8,500).
Our founders had Obama in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment
And yet, when is the last time you heard Josh Earnest or his boss call for a ban on cars and trucks?
Granted, any time someone is shot and killed that is a tragedy for someone – but so is losing a loved one to a car crash; or knifing; or a blunt instrument; or a beating. And yet any calls to ban these things would of course be met with derision.
So what makes guns different? Why do objects that are responsible for the deaths of only about 8,500 people a year, out of a population of 310 million, so exercise Obama and his minions? Why are objects whose ownership is guaranteed by the Constitution so problematic to Left-wing extremist politicians?
The answer should be obvious: You can't rule like a tyrant over an armed people, and our founders knew this.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052398_Secret_Service_protection_Second_Amendment_hypocrisy.html#ixzz3v3E01h8K
by: J. D. Heyes
Have you ever noticed that some of the most vehement anti-gun people are the very same ones who are surrounded and protected by them? That would be just about everyone in the Obama administration (and most Democrats in Congress).
In recent days we've been forced to endure another round of indignation from President Obama and other government anti-gunners following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. We've come to expect that from a president who, from the beginning of his first term, set in motion scheme after anti-gun scheme, all with the aim of hollowing out the meaning and importance of the Second Amendment.
Even an act of terrorism did not dissuade this president or those who represent him from politicizing their agenda.
As reported by Breitbart News and the Washington Times, White House spokesman Josh Earnest complained that too many Americans were flocking to gun stores in the wake of the California terrorist attack, in a nation already "awash in guns," describing the record gun purchases as "tragic."
"The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets, the more people go out and buy guns. That is both ironic and tragic," he said, as if he had the moral authority to even make such a claim.
Men protected by men with guns complaining about YOU protecting YOURSELF with guns
"In some cases these are individuals who believe that they need to buy a gun so that they can better protect themselves," he continued. "In some cases because it's Black Friday, they probably are going and purchasing a gift for a friend or a loved one who is a gun enthusiast. I'm just pointing out that there are already an astonishing number of guns on the streets of America and far too many innocent Americans who are being killed by them."
Earnest also said that he did not understand Americans' attraction to guns (maybe he should read some history on the founding of our nation?), or why they felt the need to buy so many.
And he lamented what he described as easy access to guns (maybe he should read the Constitution?).
"Ready access to guns and [the] proliferation of violent weapons of war has not led to fewer gun deaths," Earnest said. "It's tragic that even in the situation where we have lots of guns on the streets that lead to lots of innocent Americans being killed, that the response to that is that a whole lot more guns end up on the streets."
There is, of course, no evidence of that. In fact, based on the federal government's own statistics, guns (mostly handguns) are used two-to-one in suicides versus homicides. In fact, when you compare gun-related homicides to vehicular deaths, there are four times more fatalities from cars and trucks than firearm-caused homicides (about 32,000 vs about 8,500).
Our founders had Obama in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment
And yet, when is the last time you heard Josh Earnest or his boss call for a ban on cars and trucks?
Granted, any time someone is shot and killed that is a tragedy for someone – but so is losing a loved one to a car crash; or knifing; or a blunt instrument; or a beating. And yet any calls to ban these things would of course be met with derision.
So what makes guns different? Why do objects that are responsible for the deaths of only about 8,500 people a year, out of a population of 310 million, so exercise Obama and his minions? Why are objects whose ownership is guaranteed by the Constitution so problematic to Left-wing extremist politicians?
The answer should be obvious: You can't rule like a tyrant over an armed people, and our founders knew this.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052398_Secret_Service_protection_Second_Amendment_hypocrisy.html#ixzz3v3E01h8K
Are you ready???
Is it time to run for the hills?
by Thomas Miller
The current state of the world is a concern to many people. My guess is that if you are reading this, you, too, are likely uncomfortable with the current environment in which we are living. Personally, I have always had some level of concern about the leadership in our government here in the United States.
As I write this, I have a greater concern than I have ever had before. This uneasy feeling, paired with conversations with friends and family, has me convinced that now is the time to make an escape plan.
When considering what my escape plan should consist of, I can’t shake the reoccurring feeling that part of my family’s plan needs to be having a place to go if things get bad where we are. I don’t have a specific place lined up already, but I have a few possibilities in mind.
All said, making the decision to relocate is extremely difficult. Dozens of factors will likely need to be mulled over when considering a move. Employment, a child’s education and the feelings of your family can all weigh heavily on the decision-making process when it comes to getting out of dodge.
To make it as simple as possible, we’ll look at finding a retreat as two steps: determining a geographic area and individual property evaluation.
Determining a geographic area
It is impossible to determine one specific area that is the safest place to be. However, it is very possible to locate an area that will be considerably safer when compared to others. Your level of commitment and the steps that you are willing to take will determine your level of safety.
Who will be part of the process?
If you are looking for a small space for just you or for your family and you, your search may be on a smaller scale than what I will outline below. In contrast, if your search needs to take into consideration the location of others who will use the property also (and for the purpose of this article), try to include as many points to consider as possible.
Where will it be?
When looking at a geographic area for your retreat area, first decide on a country in which to settle. I do not think that there is a better country than the United States. Period. If you are planning on using this location as a place to meet a group of other like-minded (at least I hope they are like-minded) individuals, this is the time to discover where everyone is located and identify the best areas to search. Typically, this will be areas that are centrally located to all parties or at least as centrally located as possible. It is never a good idea to choose a less desirable location to be completely centralized.
Secondary to the country, determine the locale that is most appealing to you. I do not worry so much about a particular city as I do the region.
If you choose to stay in the United States, consider the areas that vary from state to state like gun laws, taxes and natural resources. Another thing to consider is the ability of that particular state to govern and defend itself against any opposition. It may pay off to look at a little history here. Specifically, look for states that have not been heavily reliant on others (especially the federal government) to operate in the past.
I used the information that I could find from each state to evaluate things like crime (especially crimes per capita down to the county level), population density and specific threats in each county (natural disasters, nuclear fallout, etc.). My thought is to find a county that has little crime now, a low population density, etc., to have the best situation to live in during tougher times. If crime is bad in an area now, can you imagine how it will be when things start to break down?
Within a county there may be some areas that are better than others for personal reasons. But I think there needs to be a balance between safety and security in addition to access to needed goods and services. If you choose a remote location, consider what it would take to access vital goods and services if you don’t have transportation. I doubt Lowe’s will still be delivering if it hits the fan.
Comparing different geographic areas
OK, you might have an idea of what will work best for you by now. When ruling out one area over another, consider the following points to identify a safer location to live:
•Population density: The more people there are, the more potential there is for problems.
•Population composition: Are there specific, known groups that could provide more issues over the general population of most areas? This may be areas where extreme fringe groups exist or where extreme poverty in high concentrations may result in higher risk.
•Crime stats: Consider the number of felonies compared to misdemeanors, the amount of time between crimes, law enforcement officer-to-citizen ratio and even if the location is inherently riskier (border states, for example).
•Natural disasters: What are the historic disasters that have occurred in the area? Always make sure to check for floodplain information.
•Nuclear threat: How close are nuclear reactors to the property? Is it in a fallout zone?
•Water source, availability of groundwater and water quality: Where does the water for the property come from? Look for an area that provides its own water, as opposed to one that purchases its water. Is groundwater available in the event you wanted to drill a well? Does activity like fracking potentially threaten the water quality?
•Politics: Go where there are like minds.
•Economy: Look at local information about the percentage of the population who fall into risk areas like the following: food insecurity, food stamp participation, poverty rate and welfare participation (as a percentage of total personal income).
•Energy availability (solar and wind): Is it feasible to provide off-grid energy to the property?
•Distance to/availability of goods and services: Look not only at where services and goods are in relation to the property, but if they are even available.
Individual property evaluation
I think the best land on which to ride out a tough time is land that is somewhat secluded. I don’t like the idea of being in the middle of a populated area when things are not going well. When doing my comparisons, I started trying to narrow down properties at the county level with consideration given to cities in the county as a discriminator between two locations that are similar, mostly trying to avoid areas that have cities with populations over 50,000.
The specific areas of consideration that I gave to individual properties included:
•Cost of property: Set a budget and get the most for your money. I like to look at what the price per acre is.
•Additional property costs: Are there additional expenses to owning the property. Things to look at are taxes, private mortgage insurance (PMI) and any other fees.
•Homeowners association/covenants, conditions and restrictions: Don’t choose a property where someone else can tell you how to live on it! Just don’t do it. Always avoid homeowners associations. Check the property for covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&R). There are properties where you will be restricted to doing certain things that are common to self-reliance, like having livestock or digging a pond on your own property.
•Size: The more the merrier, I say; but make sure you consider your limitations. Don’t get a property that is smaller than you need or so big that you cannot keep an eye on all of it. Look at information like the amount of space needed for livestock as a guide. Ensure that you consider the potential for future expansion.
•Natural water source: Is there a source of natural water on the property? Look for a year-round source instead of one that is seasonal, if you can.
•Dead-end road: I like the idea of a property that is on the end of a dead-end road. This is ideal for security purposes.
•Neighbors: Find out who owns the neighboring properties and what they plan to do with their property: Who are they (private or corporate owner) and what is their proximity to you?
•Unusable space on property: Is there space that can’t be used (ravines, etc.)?
•Zoning: Find out what the property is zoned as and whether that zoning will impact your desired use for the property.
•Adjacent to highway or city: Property that is directly adjacent to cities or highways (even just highly trafficked roads) is something that should be avoided.
•Minimum of two points of entry/exit: Don’t get trapped. Make sure there are at least two ways to get on and off your property.
•Deeded access: Ideally, you would get a property that does not share access with someone else.
•Buildings on property: Having structures already put together and on the property will give you a head start. If there is a house, is it livable? Is the square footage enough or even too much? Are there utility buildings already in place and are they salvageable? If you would like to expand in the future, how many areas can be used? Are any of them already cleared?
•Visibility from the road: Properties that have buildings visible from the road are more likely to gain the attention of others.
•Roads on property: It is necessary to move about your property. If roads and trails are already present, it will save you time, money and effort.
•Available utilities: Unless you are set on being completely off-grid, public utilities can make life much easier. Check for the availability of electricity, natural gas, water and sewer. Also, see if the property already has a propane tank or septic tank installed (if you need these, it will save you a lot of money if they are already there).
•Independent power: Is there a system in place that provides power independently of other systems? Will it work year-round? If not, can you put one in?
•Independent water: Is a well already in place? Will it provide water year-round at a minimum yield of 5 gallons or more a minute?
•Independent heat source: Can you generate your own heat if needed?
•Basement or storm shelter: Having a place to ride out a storm or even hide is a bonus.
•Back-up power: Is there a generator system for back-up power? Can one be installed? Is it powered by fuel or solar?
•Property rights: Always maintain as many rights as possible to your own property. Specifically, look at water and mineral rights and check to see if the property has any easements.
•Fencing: Is any of the property already fenced? This can be a big money-saver.
•Required permits: Are specific permits needed to make improvements or repairs to the property? Look for the following: building (minimum size requirement?), plumbing, electrical, mechanical, deck, fence, septic tank, roads, ponds, demolition, burning
•Ability to do specific activities on property (shooting, hunting, burning, etc.)
•Emergency services: What is available (fire, police, EMS)? Are they full time or volunteer?
•What is your ability to cultivate revenue-producing goods on the property (timber, crops, livestock, food products, etc.)?
•What space is available for production of goods?
•How long is the growing season?
•Soil composition: Is the soil compatible with growing healthy crops? If not, what needs to be done to change this?
•Availability of irrigation: Will you be able to easily provide water to any crops or livestock?
•Types of hunting available: If you can hunt on the property, what types of game are there? How many food plots are available? Can food plots be expanded? Will you have to leave the property to hunt?
•Types of fishing available: Is fishing available in a pond, river, etc.? What type of fish are they? Will you have to leave your property to fish?
•Is property a likely target for criminal activity (theft, vandalism, squatters, etc.)?
•Exposure: A home with a southern exposure offers great benefit over a home that does not. This can be true of other buildings, like a greenhouse, too.
•Evacuation routes: I think that a minimum of three evacuation routes away from the property is necessary. Think about it this way: If you had to leave your property, would you have a way to get away, even if your main route were closed or blocked?
•Potential or planned future development: Avoid properties that could be taken via eminent domain or that is in the path of, or potential to be in, future development. Even look to see where local towns are being expanded and whether that expansion will eventually meet up with your property.
Wow! That is a ton of information to consider. I found that it literally takes hours, along with the cooperation of a real estate agent who knows exactly what you are looking for, to find a small list of good possibilities.
If you take nothing else away from this article, please seriously consider the fact that you need to develop and refine your escape plan now. I feel confident saying that things are not on track to get any better. Worst-case scenario, you will end up with a ton of valuable information. But I don’t think you will end up feeling like there is not purpose at all in developing an escape plan, including where you will go if you have to get out of Dodge!
Good luck. Prepare diligently. Make plans for your future safety.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/time-run-hills/
by Thomas Miller
The current state of the world is a concern to many people. My guess is that if you are reading this, you, too, are likely uncomfortable with the current environment in which we are living. Personally, I have always had some level of concern about the leadership in our government here in the United States.
As I write this, I have a greater concern than I have ever had before. This uneasy feeling, paired with conversations with friends and family, has me convinced that now is the time to make an escape plan.
When considering what my escape plan should consist of, I can’t shake the reoccurring feeling that part of my family’s plan needs to be having a place to go if things get bad where we are. I don’t have a specific place lined up already, but I have a few possibilities in mind.
All said, making the decision to relocate is extremely difficult. Dozens of factors will likely need to be mulled over when considering a move. Employment, a child’s education and the feelings of your family can all weigh heavily on the decision-making process when it comes to getting out of dodge.
To make it as simple as possible, we’ll look at finding a retreat as two steps: determining a geographic area and individual property evaluation.
Determining a geographic area
It is impossible to determine one specific area that is the safest place to be. However, it is very possible to locate an area that will be considerably safer when compared to others. Your level of commitment and the steps that you are willing to take will determine your level of safety.
Who will be part of the process?
If you are looking for a small space for just you or for your family and you, your search may be on a smaller scale than what I will outline below. In contrast, if your search needs to take into consideration the location of others who will use the property also (and for the purpose of this article), try to include as many points to consider as possible.
Where will it be?
When looking at a geographic area for your retreat area, first decide on a country in which to settle. I do not think that there is a better country than the United States. Period. If you are planning on using this location as a place to meet a group of other like-minded (at least I hope they are like-minded) individuals, this is the time to discover where everyone is located and identify the best areas to search. Typically, this will be areas that are centrally located to all parties or at least as centrally located as possible. It is never a good idea to choose a less desirable location to be completely centralized.
Secondary to the country, determine the locale that is most appealing to you. I do not worry so much about a particular city as I do the region.
If you choose to stay in the United States, consider the areas that vary from state to state like gun laws, taxes and natural resources. Another thing to consider is the ability of that particular state to govern and defend itself against any opposition. It may pay off to look at a little history here. Specifically, look for states that have not been heavily reliant on others (especially the federal government) to operate in the past.
I used the information that I could find from each state to evaluate things like crime (especially crimes per capita down to the county level), population density and specific threats in each county (natural disasters, nuclear fallout, etc.). My thought is to find a county that has little crime now, a low population density, etc., to have the best situation to live in during tougher times. If crime is bad in an area now, can you imagine how it will be when things start to break down?
Within a county there may be some areas that are better than others for personal reasons. But I think there needs to be a balance between safety and security in addition to access to needed goods and services. If you choose a remote location, consider what it would take to access vital goods and services if you don’t have transportation. I doubt Lowe’s will still be delivering if it hits the fan.
Comparing different geographic areas
OK, you might have an idea of what will work best for you by now. When ruling out one area over another, consider the following points to identify a safer location to live:
•Population density: The more people there are, the more potential there is for problems.
•Population composition: Are there specific, known groups that could provide more issues over the general population of most areas? This may be areas where extreme fringe groups exist or where extreme poverty in high concentrations may result in higher risk.
•Crime stats: Consider the number of felonies compared to misdemeanors, the amount of time between crimes, law enforcement officer-to-citizen ratio and even if the location is inherently riskier (border states, for example).
•Natural disasters: What are the historic disasters that have occurred in the area? Always make sure to check for floodplain information.
•Nuclear threat: How close are nuclear reactors to the property? Is it in a fallout zone?
•Water source, availability of groundwater and water quality: Where does the water for the property come from? Look for an area that provides its own water, as opposed to one that purchases its water. Is groundwater available in the event you wanted to drill a well? Does activity like fracking potentially threaten the water quality?
•Politics: Go where there are like minds.
•Economy: Look at local information about the percentage of the population who fall into risk areas like the following: food insecurity, food stamp participation, poverty rate and welfare participation (as a percentage of total personal income).
•Energy availability (solar and wind): Is it feasible to provide off-grid energy to the property?
•Distance to/availability of goods and services: Look not only at where services and goods are in relation to the property, but if they are even available.
Individual property evaluation
I think the best land on which to ride out a tough time is land that is somewhat secluded. I don’t like the idea of being in the middle of a populated area when things are not going well. When doing my comparisons, I started trying to narrow down properties at the county level with consideration given to cities in the county as a discriminator between two locations that are similar, mostly trying to avoid areas that have cities with populations over 50,000.
The specific areas of consideration that I gave to individual properties included:
•Cost of property: Set a budget and get the most for your money. I like to look at what the price per acre is.
•Additional property costs: Are there additional expenses to owning the property. Things to look at are taxes, private mortgage insurance (PMI) and any other fees.
•Homeowners association/covenants, conditions and restrictions: Don’t choose a property where someone else can tell you how to live on it! Just don’t do it. Always avoid homeowners associations. Check the property for covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&R). There are properties where you will be restricted to doing certain things that are common to self-reliance, like having livestock or digging a pond on your own property.
•Size: The more the merrier, I say; but make sure you consider your limitations. Don’t get a property that is smaller than you need or so big that you cannot keep an eye on all of it. Look at information like the amount of space needed for livestock as a guide. Ensure that you consider the potential for future expansion.
•Natural water source: Is there a source of natural water on the property? Look for a year-round source instead of one that is seasonal, if you can.
•Dead-end road: I like the idea of a property that is on the end of a dead-end road. This is ideal for security purposes.
•Neighbors: Find out who owns the neighboring properties and what they plan to do with their property: Who are they (private or corporate owner) and what is their proximity to you?
•Unusable space on property: Is there space that can’t be used (ravines, etc.)?
•Zoning: Find out what the property is zoned as and whether that zoning will impact your desired use for the property.
•Adjacent to highway or city: Property that is directly adjacent to cities or highways (even just highly trafficked roads) is something that should be avoided.
•Minimum of two points of entry/exit: Don’t get trapped. Make sure there are at least two ways to get on and off your property.
•Deeded access: Ideally, you would get a property that does not share access with someone else.
•Buildings on property: Having structures already put together and on the property will give you a head start. If there is a house, is it livable? Is the square footage enough or even too much? Are there utility buildings already in place and are they salvageable? If you would like to expand in the future, how many areas can be used? Are any of them already cleared?
•Visibility from the road: Properties that have buildings visible from the road are more likely to gain the attention of others.
•Roads on property: It is necessary to move about your property. If roads and trails are already present, it will save you time, money and effort.
•Available utilities: Unless you are set on being completely off-grid, public utilities can make life much easier. Check for the availability of electricity, natural gas, water and sewer. Also, see if the property already has a propane tank or septic tank installed (if you need these, it will save you a lot of money if they are already there).
•Independent power: Is there a system in place that provides power independently of other systems? Will it work year-round? If not, can you put one in?
•Independent water: Is a well already in place? Will it provide water year-round at a minimum yield of 5 gallons or more a minute?
•Independent heat source: Can you generate your own heat if needed?
•Basement or storm shelter: Having a place to ride out a storm or even hide is a bonus.
•Back-up power: Is there a generator system for back-up power? Can one be installed? Is it powered by fuel or solar?
•Property rights: Always maintain as many rights as possible to your own property. Specifically, look at water and mineral rights and check to see if the property has any easements.
•Fencing: Is any of the property already fenced? This can be a big money-saver.
•Required permits: Are specific permits needed to make improvements or repairs to the property? Look for the following: building (minimum size requirement?), plumbing, electrical, mechanical, deck, fence, septic tank, roads, ponds, demolition, burning
•Ability to do specific activities on property (shooting, hunting, burning, etc.)
•Emergency services: What is available (fire, police, EMS)? Are they full time or volunteer?
•What is your ability to cultivate revenue-producing goods on the property (timber, crops, livestock, food products, etc.)?
•What space is available for production of goods?
•How long is the growing season?
•Soil composition: Is the soil compatible with growing healthy crops? If not, what needs to be done to change this?
•Availability of irrigation: Will you be able to easily provide water to any crops or livestock?
•Types of hunting available: If you can hunt on the property, what types of game are there? How many food plots are available? Can food plots be expanded? Will you have to leave the property to hunt?
•Types of fishing available: Is fishing available in a pond, river, etc.? What type of fish are they? Will you have to leave your property to fish?
•Is property a likely target for criminal activity (theft, vandalism, squatters, etc.)?
•Exposure: A home with a southern exposure offers great benefit over a home that does not. This can be true of other buildings, like a greenhouse, too.
•Evacuation routes: I think that a minimum of three evacuation routes away from the property is necessary. Think about it this way: If you had to leave your property, would you have a way to get away, even if your main route were closed or blocked?
•Potential or planned future development: Avoid properties that could be taken via eminent domain or that is in the path of, or potential to be in, future development. Even look to see where local towns are being expanded and whether that expansion will eventually meet up with your property.
Wow! That is a ton of information to consider. I found that it literally takes hours, along with the cooperation of a real estate agent who knows exactly what you are looking for, to find a small list of good possibilities.
If you take nothing else away from this article, please seriously consider the fact that you need to develop and refine your escape plan now. I feel confident saying that things are not on track to get any better. Worst-case scenario, you will end up with a ton of valuable information. But I don’t think you will end up feeling like there is not purpose at all in developing an escape plan, including where you will go if you have to get out of Dodge!
Good luck. Prepare diligently. Make plans for your future safety.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/time-run-hills/
It is all part of the plan, folks...
What fresh horror awaits the world after Fed rate hike?
by Brandon Smith
There is one predominant reality that must be understood before one can grasp the nature of the Federal Reserve and the decisions it makes, and that reality is this: The Fed’s purpose is not to defend or extend American markets or the dollar; the Fed’s job is ultimately to destroy American markets and the dollar. I have been repeating this little fact for years because it seems as though many people simply will not accept the truth, which is why they have trouble comprehending the actions that the Fed initiates.
If you believe the Fed is the sole purveyor of the global economic crisis and is at the top of the internationalist pyramid, then you probably predicted that the privately controlled central bank would “never in a million years” raise interest rates. If you believe that the Fed’s primary goal is to prolong the life span of the “American empire,” again, you probably predicted that the Fed would never raise interest rates. There is a serious normalcy bias when it comes to parts of the alternative economic world and their position on the Federal Reserve. They refuse to acknowledge that the Fed is a deliberately preset time bomb meant to vaporize the U.S. economic system and currency. And as long as this continues, they will never be able to determine what is likely to happen next within our fiscal structure.
There is no way around it: If you cannot grasp the root motivations of the Fed, then you will become cognitively crippled in your struggle to see the next pitfall in the near-term economic future.
In August, I made this prediction concerning the Fed rate hike decision:
The Federal Reserve push for a rate hike will likely be determined before 2015 is over. Talk of a September increase in interest rates may be a ploy, and a last-minute decision to delay could be on the table. This tactic of edge-of-the-seat meetings and surprise delays was used during the QE taper scenario, which threw a lot of analysts off their guard and caused many to believe that a taper would never happen. Well, it did happen, just as a rate hike will happen, only slightly later than mainstream analysts expect.
If a delay occurs, it will be short-lived, triggering a dead cat bounce in stocks, with rates increasing by December as dismal retail sales become undeniable leading into the Christmas season.
I made this prediction (as well as my prediction on the taper in 2013) on the foundation that the Fed is only an appendage of a greater elitist banking machine. The Fed as an institutional idea is expendable, or at least replaceable. The dollar is slated for demolition. And though it may continue on for a time in a more marginalized capacity, the “Fed note” as we know it today will soon be crushed under the weight of what the International Monetary Fund calls the “global economic reset.” In other words, every part of my prediction turned out correct because I accepted the reality that the Fed will invariably take the most destructive policy actions at the worst possible time with the purpose of crisis in mind.
Central bankers also have a tendency to follow patterns. They rarely change strategies on a whim. Most of the decisions we see made by the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, etc. were likely made months, if not years, in advance and follow the same strategies used during previous crises.
For example, the Fed process of raising interest rates this December followed almost exactly the process they used to introduce the taper of QE3 in 2013: a buildup of rhetoric in mainstream news during the first half of the year and then a fake-out in September, followed by months of uncertainty in markets and then passage of the policy in December. The Fed also has a habit of raising interest rates at the onset of economic instability or right in the middle of a downturn, as it did in 1928-1929, triggering the Great Depression, and in 1931, adding fuel to the fire of financial catastrophe. These particular catalyzing policy actions are partly what Ben Bernanke was referring to on Nov. 8, 2002, in a speech given at “A Conference to Honor Milton Friedman … On the Occasion of His 90th Birthday”:
In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn.
…
Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.
Based on this pattern of policy actions leading to fiscal disaster, I believe alternative analysts can predict with some certainty what is likely to happen now that the Fed has raised rates in the middle of the most pervasive economic contraction since the Great Depression was initiated (as Bernanke admitted) by central bankers. Here are some trends that I believe will become exponential as we move into 2016.
Market turmoil going critical
This might seem like an easy prediction to make; the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements have both been publishing “warnings” on a possible negative financial event if the Fed were to raise rates. I just want to point out first that the Federal Reserve takes its marching orders from the BIS, so the BIS would certainly know if a Fed policy will result in collapse.
Second, market turmoil is guaranteed given the fact that banks and corporations have been utterly reliant on near-zero interest rates and free overnight lending from the Fed. They have been using these no-cost and low-cost loans primarily for stock buybacks, purchasing back their own stocks and reducing the number of shares on the market, thereby artificially elevating the value of the remaining shares and driving up the market as a whole. Now that near-zero lending is over, these banks and corporations will not be able to afford constant overnight borrowing, and the buybacks will cease. Thus, stock markets will crash in the near term.
This process has already begun with increased volatility leading up to and after the Fed rate hike. Watch for far more erratic stock movements (300 to 500 points or more) up and down from now on, with the overall trend leading down into the 15,000-point range for the Dow in the first two quarters of 2016. Extraordinary but short lived positive increases in the markets will occur at times (Christmas and New Year’s tend to result in positive rallies), but shock rallies are just as much a sign of volatility and instability as shock crashes.
It is hard to say how fast and how far markets will drop by the end of 2016. I believe we will see a repeat of the 2008-2009 market chaos, but we are entering into some unknown territory being that the crisis we are experiencing is not a purely deflationary one like the Great Depression. Rather, this is a “stagflationary” collapse with elements of the Great Depression and the Weimar inflationary disaster.
The Fed will continue to hike interest rates
I believe the Fed will continue to hike rates throughout 2016 despite any negative economic signals. It has ignored the global contraction so far and will ignore future events. Why? The Fed is setting the stage for a collapse. Period.
Mainstream analysts claim skepticism over the Fed’s publicly announced “dot plot” schedule of at least four rate hikes in 2016. I am not skeptical. I think they are going for broke and opening the gates to fiscal hell.
But wouldn’t rate hikes result in a stronger and more desirable dollar? Possibly, in the short term. However, many people are unaware that a supposedly “strong” dollar index relative to other national currencies is just as much a death knell for the greenback as a weak dollar index.
Petrodollar status lost
According to the current developments in oil markets, I believe the next major economic trigger event will be the removal of the dollar’s petro-currency status. The “strong” dollar is now driving down prices at a rate that is giving OPEC nations whiplash. Saudi Arabia has already hinted at a depeg from the dollar, as low oil value continues to drive oil producers into debt.
Oil producers have refused to cut production, despite the fact that many nations no longer have storage capacity for excess reserves. Global demand continues to decline, causing a global oil glut so intense that tankers carrying oil are now being forced to sit offshore waiting for space to dump their cargo. Some are even turning around mid-trip and going back to where they came from.
Why have OPEC nations refused to cut production despite these developments? Because they plan to diversify away from the dollar and into a basket of currencies in order to “stabilize” oil prices rather than reduce supply. The icing on the cake is the recent decision by Congress and the Obama administration to allow the removal of the 40-year-old oil export ban within the U.S. With the lifting of the ban, the U.S. now becomes a competitor in the global oil market in the middle of the worst oil glut since the early 1980s. This might not seem like the smartest move to many analysts, but the Fed is not the only institution out to derail the United States. Certain elitists within our own government are also making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible time, and they are doing this quite deliberately.
With the U.S. now entering the market as an oil competitor, I do not see any compelling reason for OPEC nations to continue pegging oil sales to the dollar. With the loss of petrostatus, the dollar will be progressively torn apart. This will lead into the eventual removal of the dollar’s world reserve status, which I have been warning about for years, most recently in my article “The global economic reset has begun.”
Geopolitical distractions
I do not see all of these economic developments taking place in an open vacuum. It makes far more sense for them to progress in the background during geopolitical upheaval with terrorism being the main distraction for the general public. I believe 2016 will be labeled the “year of the terrorist,” as ISIS attacks expand to every corner of the U.S. and in numerous EU nations. This “fog of war” is completely necessary to hide the actions of the most dangerous terrorists: international financiers and elites bent on morphing entire global political and financial structures into something more centralized and more sinister.
Other distractions are certainly possible, but there are far too many trigger points around the world at this time to make any kind of prediction as to which ones (if any) will be used. The false East/West paradigm continues and is useful in that it provides a rationale for the eventual dump of the U.S. dollar. Russian and NATO tensions could be used to foment regional wars or even a world war if that is in the cards. I do not see this as the endgame, though.
Economic collapse is the greatest weapon at the disposal of globalists. National panic, riots, looting, starvation, magnified crime: All of these things result in mass die-offs and desperation. Desperation leads to calls for strong leadership, and strong leadership usually results in totalitarianism. It might seem “sensationalist” to tie all of these possible outcomes to the Fed rate hike decision, but give it a little time. Those who make accusations of sensationalism and “fear mongering” today will be asserting tomorrow that such developments were “easily predictable.”
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/what-fresh-horror-awaits-the-world-after-fed-rate-hike/
by Brandon Smith
There is one predominant reality that must be understood before one can grasp the nature of the Federal Reserve and the decisions it makes, and that reality is this: The Fed’s purpose is not to defend or extend American markets or the dollar; the Fed’s job is ultimately to destroy American markets and the dollar. I have been repeating this little fact for years because it seems as though many people simply will not accept the truth, which is why they have trouble comprehending the actions that the Fed initiates.
If you believe the Fed is the sole purveyor of the global economic crisis and is at the top of the internationalist pyramid, then you probably predicted that the privately controlled central bank would “never in a million years” raise interest rates. If you believe that the Fed’s primary goal is to prolong the life span of the “American empire,” again, you probably predicted that the Fed would never raise interest rates. There is a serious normalcy bias when it comes to parts of the alternative economic world and their position on the Federal Reserve. They refuse to acknowledge that the Fed is a deliberately preset time bomb meant to vaporize the U.S. economic system and currency. And as long as this continues, they will never be able to determine what is likely to happen next within our fiscal structure.
There is no way around it: If you cannot grasp the root motivations of the Fed, then you will become cognitively crippled in your struggle to see the next pitfall in the near-term economic future.
In August, I made this prediction concerning the Fed rate hike decision:
The Federal Reserve push for a rate hike will likely be determined before 2015 is over. Talk of a September increase in interest rates may be a ploy, and a last-minute decision to delay could be on the table. This tactic of edge-of-the-seat meetings and surprise delays was used during the QE taper scenario, which threw a lot of analysts off their guard and caused many to believe that a taper would never happen. Well, it did happen, just as a rate hike will happen, only slightly later than mainstream analysts expect.
If a delay occurs, it will be short-lived, triggering a dead cat bounce in stocks, with rates increasing by December as dismal retail sales become undeniable leading into the Christmas season.
I made this prediction (as well as my prediction on the taper in 2013) on the foundation that the Fed is only an appendage of a greater elitist banking machine. The Fed as an institutional idea is expendable, or at least replaceable. The dollar is slated for demolition. And though it may continue on for a time in a more marginalized capacity, the “Fed note” as we know it today will soon be crushed under the weight of what the International Monetary Fund calls the “global economic reset.” In other words, every part of my prediction turned out correct because I accepted the reality that the Fed will invariably take the most destructive policy actions at the worst possible time with the purpose of crisis in mind.
Central bankers also have a tendency to follow patterns. They rarely change strategies on a whim. Most of the decisions we see made by the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, etc. were likely made months, if not years, in advance and follow the same strategies used during previous crises.
For example, the Fed process of raising interest rates this December followed almost exactly the process they used to introduce the taper of QE3 in 2013: a buildup of rhetoric in mainstream news during the first half of the year and then a fake-out in September, followed by months of uncertainty in markets and then passage of the policy in December. The Fed also has a habit of raising interest rates at the onset of economic instability or right in the middle of a downturn, as it did in 1928-1929, triggering the Great Depression, and in 1931, adding fuel to the fire of financial catastrophe. These particular catalyzing policy actions are partly what Ben Bernanke was referring to on Nov. 8, 2002, in a speech given at “A Conference to Honor Milton Friedman … On the Occasion of His 90th Birthday”:
In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn.
…
Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.
Based on this pattern of policy actions leading to fiscal disaster, I believe alternative analysts can predict with some certainty what is likely to happen now that the Fed has raised rates in the middle of the most pervasive economic contraction since the Great Depression was initiated (as Bernanke admitted) by central bankers. Here are some trends that I believe will become exponential as we move into 2016.
Market turmoil going critical
This might seem like an easy prediction to make; the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements have both been publishing “warnings” on a possible negative financial event if the Fed were to raise rates. I just want to point out first that the Federal Reserve takes its marching orders from the BIS, so the BIS would certainly know if a Fed policy will result in collapse.
Second, market turmoil is guaranteed given the fact that banks and corporations have been utterly reliant on near-zero interest rates and free overnight lending from the Fed. They have been using these no-cost and low-cost loans primarily for stock buybacks, purchasing back their own stocks and reducing the number of shares on the market, thereby artificially elevating the value of the remaining shares and driving up the market as a whole. Now that near-zero lending is over, these banks and corporations will not be able to afford constant overnight borrowing, and the buybacks will cease. Thus, stock markets will crash in the near term.
This process has already begun with increased volatility leading up to and after the Fed rate hike. Watch for far more erratic stock movements (300 to 500 points or more) up and down from now on, with the overall trend leading down into the 15,000-point range for the Dow in the first two quarters of 2016. Extraordinary but short lived positive increases in the markets will occur at times (Christmas and New Year’s tend to result in positive rallies), but shock rallies are just as much a sign of volatility and instability as shock crashes.
It is hard to say how fast and how far markets will drop by the end of 2016. I believe we will see a repeat of the 2008-2009 market chaos, but we are entering into some unknown territory being that the crisis we are experiencing is not a purely deflationary one like the Great Depression. Rather, this is a “stagflationary” collapse with elements of the Great Depression and the Weimar inflationary disaster.
The Fed will continue to hike interest rates
I believe the Fed will continue to hike rates throughout 2016 despite any negative economic signals. It has ignored the global contraction so far and will ignore future events. Why? The Fed is setting the stage for a collapse. Period.
Mainstream analysts claim skepticism over the Fed’s publicly announced “dot plot” schedule of at least four rate hikes in 2016. I am not skeptical. I think they are going for broke and opening the gates to fiscal hell.
But wouldn’t rate hikes result in a stronger and more desirable dollar? Possibly, in the short term. However, many people are unaware that a supposedly “strong” dollar index relative to other national currencies is just as much a death knell for the greenback as a weak dollar index.
Petrodollar status lost
According to the current developments in oil markets, I believe the next major economic trigger event will be the removal of the dollar’s petro-currency status. The “strong” dollar is now driving down prices at a rate that is giving OPEC nations whiplash. Saudi Arabia has already hinted at a depeg from the dollar, as low oil value continues to drive oil producers into debt.
Oil producers have refused to cut production, despite the fact that many nations no longer have storage capacity for excess reserves. Global demand continues to decline, causing a global oil glut so intense that tankers carrying oil are now being forced to sit offshore waiting for space to dump their cargo. Some are even turning around mid-trip and going back to where they came from.
Why have OPEC nations refused to cut production despite these developments? Because they plan to diversify away from the dollar and into a basket of currencies in order to “stabilize” oil prices rather than reduce supply. The icing on the cake is the recent decision by Congress and the Obama administration to allow the removal of the 40-year-old oil export ban within the U.S. With the lifting of the ban, the U.S. now becomes a competitor in the global oil market in the middle of the worst oil glut since the early 1980s. This might not seem like the smartest move to many analysts, but the Fed is not the only institution out to derail the United States. Certain elitists within our own government are also making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible time, and they are doing this quite deliberately.
With the U.S. now entering the market as an oil competitor, I do not see any compelling reason for OPEC nations to continue pegging oil sales to the dollar. With the loss of petrostatus, the dollar will be progressively torn apart. This will lead into the eventual removal of the dollar’s world reserve status, which I have been warning about for years, most recently in my article “The global economic reset has begun.”
Geopolitical distractions
I do not see all of these economic developments taking place in an open vacuum. It makes far more sense for them to progress in the background during geopolitical upheaval with terrorism being the main distraction for the general public. I believe 2016 will be labeled the “year of the terrorist,” as ISIS attacks expand to every corner of the U.S. and in numerous EU nations. This “fog of war” is completely necessary to hide the actions of the most dangerous terrorists: international financiers and elites bent on morphing entire global political and financial structures into something more centralized and more sinister.
Other distractions are certainly possible, but there are far too many trigger points around the world at this time to make any kind of prediction as to which ones (if any) will be used. The false East/West paradigm continues and is useful in that it provides a rationale for the eventual dump of the U.S. dollar. Russian and NATO tensions could be used to foment regional wars or even a world war if that is in the cards. I do not see this as the endgame, though.
Economic collapse is the greatest weapon at the disposal of globalists. National panic, riots, looting, starvation, magnified crime: All of these things result in mass die-offs and desperation. Desperation leads to calls for strong leadership, and strong leadership usually results in totalitarianism. It might seem “sensationalist” to tie all of these possible outcomes to the Fed rate hike decision, but give it a little time. Those who make accusations of sensationalism and “fear mongering” today will be asserting tomorrow that such developments were “easily predictable.”
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/what-fresh-horror-awaits-the-world-after-fed-rate-hike/
"I personally believe in helping one’s fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one’s own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another’s pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation."
Immorality and Contempt for Liberty
By Walter E. Williams
American immorality and contempt for liberty lie at the root of most of the political economic problems our nation faces. They explain the fiscal problems we face, such as growing national debt and budget deficits at the federal, state and local levels of government. Our immorality and contempt for liberty are reflected most in our widespread belief that government ought to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. Let’s examine it.
Suppose there is an elderly widow in your neighborhood. She does not have the strength to mow her lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks. Plus she does not have the financial means to hire someone to perform them. Here is my question: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the widow’s lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks? Moreover, if the person so ordered failed to obey the government mandate, would you approve of some sort of sanction, such as a fine, property confiscation or imprisonment? I believe and hope that most of my fellow Americans would find such a mandate repulsive. They would rightfully condemn it as a form of slavery, which can also be described as the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Would there be the same condemnation if, instead of forcing one of your neighbors to actually perform the household tasks, your neighbor were forced to fork over $50 of his weekly earnings to the widow? That way, she could hire someone to perform the tasks that she is unable to do. Would that mandate differ from one under which your neighbor is forced to actually perform the household tasks? I’d answer no. Just the mechanism differs for forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another.
Most Americans would want to help this widow, but they would find anything that openly smacks of servitude or slavery deeply offensive.
They would have a clearer conscience if government would use its taxing authority, say an income tax or property tax. A government agency could then send the widow a $50 check to hire someone to mow her lawn and perform other household tasks. This collective mechanism would make the servitude invisible, but it wouldn’t change the fact that people are being forcibly used to serve the purposes of others. Putting the money into a government pot simply conceals an act that would otherwise be deemed morally repulsive.
Some might misleadingly argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules. But a majority consensus does not make acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral moral. In other words, if the neighbors got a majority vote to force one of their number, under pain of punishment, to perform household tasks for the elderly widow, it would still be immoral. People like to give immoral acts an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding expressions, such as “spreading the wealth,” “income redistribution,” “caring for the less fortunate” and “the will of the majority.”
If one American can use government to force another to serve his purpose, what is the basis for denying another American the right to do the same thing? For example, if farmers are able to use Congress to give them cash for crop subsidies, why should toymakers be denied the right for Congress to give them cash subsidies when their sales slump?
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another. As a result, spending grows. Today’s federal budget is about $3.8 trillion. At least two-thirds of it can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another.
I personally believe in helping one’s fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one’s own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another’s pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/walter-e-williams/contempt-liberty/
By Walter E. Williams
American immorality and contempt for liberty lie at the root of most of the political economic problems our nation faces. They explain the fiscal problems we face, such as growing national debt and budget deficits at the federal, state and local levels of government. Our immorality and contempt for liberty are reflected most in our widespread belief that government ought to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. Let’s examine it.
Suppose there is an elderly widow in your neighborhood. She does not have the strength to mow her lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks. Plus she does not have the financial means to hire someone to perform them. Here is my question: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the widow’s lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks? Moreover, if the person so ordered failed to obey the government mandate, would you approve of some sort of sanction, such as a fine, property confiscation or imprisonment? I believe and hope that most of my fellow Americans would find such a mandate repulsive. They would rightfully condemn it as a form of slavery, which can also be described as the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Would there be the same condemnation if, instead of forcing one of your neighbors to actually perform the household tasks, your neighbor were forced to fork over $50 of his weekly earnings to the widow? That way, she could hire someone to perform the tasks that she is unable to do. Would that mandate differ from one under which your neighbor is forced to actually perform the household tasks? I’d answer no. Just the mechanism differs for forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another.
Most Americans would want to help this widow, but they would find anything that openly smacks of servitude or slavery deeply offensive.
They would have a clearer conscience if government would use its taxing authority, say an income tax or property tax. A government agency could then send the widow a $50 check to hire someone to mow her lawn and perform other household tasks. This collective mechanism would make the servitude invisible, but it wouldn’t change the fact that people are being forcibly used to serve the purposes of others. Putting the money into a government pot simply conceals an act that would otherwise be deemed morally repulsive.
Some might misleadingly argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules. But a majority consensus does not make acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral moral. In other words, if the neighbors got a majority vote to force one of their number, under pain of punishment, to perform household tasks for the elderly widow, it would still be immoral. People like to give immoral acts an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding expressions, such as “spreading the wealth,” “income redistribution,” “caring for the less fortunate” and “the will of the majority.”
If one American can use government to force another to serve his purpose, what is the basis for denying another American the right to do the same thing? For example, if farmers are able to use Congress to give them cash for crop subsidies, why should toymakers be denied the right for Congress to give them cash subsidies when their sales slump?
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another. As a result, spending grows. Today’s federal budget is about $3.8 trillion. At least two-thirds of it can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another.
I personally believe in helping one’s fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one’s own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another’s pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/walter-e-williams/contempt-liberty/
Monday, December 21, 2015
Do not question, obey and believe everything the government tells you...
On Conspiracy Theories
The Burning Platform
Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
“In many nations, rational people end up believing crazy things, including (false) conspiracy theories. Those crazy thoughts can lead to violence, including terrorism. Many terrorist acts have been fueled by false conspiracy theories, and there is a good argument that some such acts would not have occurred in the absence of such theories. The key point—and, in a way, the most puzzling and disturbing one—is that the crazy thoughts are often held by people who are not crazy at all.”
Cass Sunstein- White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
If you don’t know who Cass Sunstein is, or what he does now would be a good time to do some research. Not only because of his position with the White House and the power that entails, but because he understands quite clearly what problems are posed by people who, in his own words are, “…neither ignorant, not ill-educated. On the contrary they can be spectacularly well informed…”
Conspiracy theories are, in short, the belief that others conspire in secret to commit criminal acts. They do, no secret there. In fact the majority of prisoners in Federal Penitentiaries are serving time not for a specific crime, but for conspiracy to commit a felony, more simply discussing their intentions with another person in secret. It must be difficult indeed to simultaneously prosecute large numbers of people for the very activity that you are assigned to debunk and then somehow explain to people that it’s dangerous to believe in them. Yes, yes, you can imagine them saying, other people do engage in conspiracies, but we never would and you’d have to be crazy to even consider it.
Point taken, Mr. Sunstein.
Prior to the advent of the Internet there were few places where people could openly engage in any discussion of the misgivings they had about certain events. Mailing lists, fringe publications, but no open forum for expressing doubt and discovering the fundamental and underlying reasons behind such thoughts. Mr. Sunstein has often argued that the reason most people believe in conspiracy theories is because it makes them feel safe, a notion that is as hard to believe as the one that says the government would never engage in a conspiracy. If anything, the dawning realization that those entrusted to care for and protect you are engaged in a pattern of behaviors that are not only dangerous, but wantonly destructive to the very values and beliefs we hold most dear. To believe in a conspiracy committed by a government that is powerful, that is actively spying on it’s own people without legal justification and that appears immune to the law is not reassuring or comforting, it is terrifying. It is also, based on what we actually know for a fact, common sense
Let’s begin by covering a few basics-
Operation Northwoods
In 1962 the Department of Defense acting in cooperation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a paper detailing covert operation by either the CIA or other Government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against innocent American civilians, specifically to either hijack US commercial aircraft, shoot down commercial aircraft, attacks and kill US soldiers at Guantanamo or an attack on the Organization of American States with the intent of blaming the actions on Cuba in order to destabilize or overturn the government. These plans were signed and submitted by a host of top ranking US Military officials including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer and submitted to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara who would later play a large role in the US war in Viet Nam.
None of the people involved in the research, planning, drafting or submission of this authorized government conspiracy was ever charged with a crime or held accountable. In fact the chief defense has always been that it was rejected by then President John F Kennedy, rendering further discussion null and void. Think about it for a moment and decide for yourself what the implications of such a plan mean for people who are, in the words of Cass Sunstein, spectacularly well informed, i.e conspiracy theorists. The government of the United States of America, using top secret clearance and taxpayer dollars actively plotted to murder innocent Americans in acts of terror in order to instigate a war on false grounds. To know this, according to the leading expert on conspiracy theories, makes us feel safer.
Incontrovertible proof that the government does in fact engage in criminal conspiracies that target innocent civilians in order to promote government sanctioned programs or military actions while it’s criminal participants escape justice has now been established as a fact, not a theory. Why this important piece of American history is unknown to most people is not puzzling, it is because it has been deliberately pushed off to the side, dismissed as irrelevant or pointless because it didn’t happen. Conspiracy theories do not require action, however, only the conspiracy.
One of the greatest issues the Government has in dealing with the conspiracies currently circulating is the ease with which the Internet allows them to propagate. While the vast majority of Americans have never heard of the Gulf of Tonkin, quite a few have heard the term “9/11 was an inside job” or know that something is not quite right about Sandy Hook. The ubiquitous nature of cell phone cameras has given people the ability to see for themselves without having to look through the lens of the MSM and depend upon sanitized news coverage to inform them of the details of various events taking place around the troubled world. The time when the government was kept in check by the 5th estate has long ago ceased to restrain them. The news organizations have become a tool of the establishment rather than a check on their power. The only option left is for either whistle blowers to come forward or citizen journalists to investigate on their own time and dime...
Read the rest:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/12/18/on-conspiracy-theories/
The Burning Platform
Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
“In many nations, rational people end up believing crazy things, including (false) conspiracy theories. Those crazy thoughts can lead to violence, including terrorism. Many terrorist acts have been fueled by false conspiracy theories, and there is a good argument that some such acts would not have occurred in the absence of such theories. The key point—and, in a way, the most puzzling and disturbing one—is that the crazy thoughts are often held by people who are not crazy at all.”
Cass Sunstein- White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
If you don’t know who Cass Sunstein is, or what he does now would be a good time to do some research. Not only because of his position with the White House and the power that entails, but because he understands quite clearly what problems are posed by people who, in his own words are, “…neither ignorant, not ill-educated. On the contrary they can be spectacularly well informed…”
Conspiracy theories are, in short, the belief that others conspire in secret to commit criminal acts. They do, no secret there. In fact the majority of prisoners in Federal Penitentiaries are serving time not for a specific crime, but for conspiracy to commit a felony, more simply discussing their intentions with another person in secret. It must be difficult indeed to simultaneously prosecute large numbers of people for the very activity that you are assigned to debunk and then somehow explain to people that it’s dangerous to believe in them. Yes, yes, you can imagine them saying, other people do engage in conspiracies, but we never would and you’d have to be crazy to even consider it.
Point taken, Mr. Sunstein.
Prior to the advent of the Internet there were few places where people could openly engage in any discussion of the misgivings they had about certain events. Mailing lists, fringe publications, but no open forum for expressing doubt and discovering the fundamental and underlying reasons behind such thoughts. Mr. Sunstein has often argued that the reason most people believe in conspiracy theories is because it makes them feel safe, a notion that is as hard to believe as the one that says the government would never engage in a conspiracy. If anything, the dawning realization that those entrusted to care for and protect you are engaged in a pattern of behaviors that are not only dangerous, but wantonly destructive to the very values and beliefs we hold most dear. To believe in a conspiracy committed by a government that is powerful, that is actively spying on it’s own people without legal justification and that appears immune to the law is not reassuring or comforting, it is terrifying. It is also, based on what we actually know for a fact, common sense
Let’s begin by covering a few basics-
Operation Northwoods
In 1962 the Department of Defense acting in cooperation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a paper detailing covert operation by either the CIA or other Government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against innocent American civilians, specifically to either hijack US commercial aircraft, shoot down commercial aircraft, attacks and kill US soldiers at Guantanamo or an attack on the Organization of American States with the intent of blaming the actions on Cuba in order to destabilize or overturn the government. These plans were signed and submitted by a host of top ranking US Military officials including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer and submitted to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara who would later play a large role in the US war in Viet Nam.
None of the people involved in the research, planning, drafting or submission of this authorized government conspiracy was ever charged with a crime or held accountable. In fact the chief defense has always been that it was rejected by then President John F Kennedy, rendering further discussion null and void. Think about it for a moment and decide for yourself what the implications of such a plan mean for people who are, in the words of Cass Sunstein, spectacularly well informed, i.e conspiracy theorists. The government of the United States of America, using top secret clearance and taxpayer dollars actively plotted to murder innocent Americans in acts of terror in order to instigate a war on false grounds. To know this, according to the leading expert on conspiracy theories, makes us feel safer.
Incontrovertible proof that the government does in fact engage in criminal conspiracies that target innocent civilians in order to promote government sanctioned programs or military actions while it’s criminal participants escape justice has now been established as a fact, not a theory. Why this important piece of American history is unknown to most people is not puzzling, it is because it has been deliberately pushed off to the side, dismissed as irrelevant or pointless because it didn’t happen. Conspiracy theories do not require action, however, only the conspiracy.
One of the greatest issues the Government has in dealing with the conspiracies currently circulating is the ease with which the Internet allows them to propagate. While the vast majority of Americans have never heard of the Gulf of Tonkin, quite a few have heard the term “9/11 was an inside job” or know that something is not quite right about Sandy Hook. The ubiquitous nature of cell phone cameras has given people the ability to see for themselves without having to look through the lens of the MSM and depend upon sanitized news coverage to inform them of the details of various events taking place around the troubled world. The time when the government was kept in check by the 5th estate has long ago ceased to restrain them. The news organizations have become a tool of the establishment rather than a check on their power. The only option left is for either whistle blowers to come forward or citizen journalists to investigate on their own time and dime...
Read the rest:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/12/18/on-conspiracy-theories/
End game...
Mission Accomplished
By Peter Schiff
On May 1, 2003 on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln then President George W. Bush, after becoming the first U.S. president to land on an aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft (in a dashing olive drab flight suit), declared underneath an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner that “major combat operations” in Iraq had been concluded, that regime change had been effected, and that America had prevailed in its mission to transform the Middle East. 13 years later, after years of additional combat operations in Iraq, and a Middle East that is spiraling out of control and increasingly disdainful of America’s influence, we look back at the “Mission Accomplished” event as the epitome of false confidence and premature celebration.
The image of W on the flight deck comes to mind in much of the reaction to this week’s decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. While many in the media and on Wall Street talked of a “concluded experiment” and the “dawning of a new era,” few realize that we are just as firmly caught in the thickets of failed policy as were Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in the misunderstood quagmire of 2003 Iraq.
In its initial story of the day’s events, The Washington Post (12/16/15) declared that by raising the Fed Funds rate to one quarter of a percent The Fed is “ending an era of easy money that helped save the nation from another Great Depression.” Putting aside the fact that 25 basis points is still 175 points below the near 2.0% rate of core inflation that the government has reported over the past 12 months (and should therefore be considered undeniably easy), the more important question to ask is into what environment the Fed is apparently turning this page.
Historically, the Fed has begun its tightening cycles during the early stages of expansions, when the economy had enough forward momentum to absorb the headwinds of rate increases. But that is not at all the case this time around.
Prior to the recent Great Recession, there had been six recessions since 1969, and over those episodes, on average 13.3 months passed from the time the recession ended to when the Fed felt confident enough in the recovery to raise rates. (The lag time was just 3.5 months in the four recessions between 1971 and 1991). (The National Bureau of Economic Research, US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions, 4/23/12)
But after the recession of 2008 – 2009, the Fed waited a staggering 78 months to tighten the monetary levers. Those prior tightening cyclesalso occurred at times when GDP was much higher than it is today. Over the prior six occasions GDP, in the quarter when the Fed moved, averaged a robust 5.3%. While the current quarterly GDP is still unknown, the data suggests that we will get a figure between 1% and 2% annualized. (Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Another key difference is the level of unemployment at the time the hikes occurred. As they started tightening much earlier in the expansion cycles, unemployment at the times of those prior recoveries tended to be high but falling. The average unemployment rate at the time the six prior tightenings occurred was 7.5%. But that average rate had fallen to 5.1% (a level that most economists consider to be “full employment”) an average of 42 months after the initial Fed tightening. In other words, those expansions were young enough and strong enough to absorb the rate hikes while still bringing down unemployment. (Bureau of Labor Statistics; Federal Reserve Bank of NY)
Our current unemployment rate has already fallen to 5.0% (mostly because workers have dropped out of the labor force). Few economists allow for the possibility that it could fall much lower. This is particularly true when you acknowledge the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions that we are seeing today.
As I stated in my most recent commentary, there is a growing troth of data that shows that the U.S. economy is rapidly losing momentum. Some data points, such as the inventory to sales ratio and the ISM manufacturing data suggest that a bona fide recession may be right around the corner (among them, this week’s truly terrible manufacturing PMI and industrial production numbers, a very weak Philly Fed Outlook, the weakest service sector PMI of the year, a big drop in the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index, and the announcement that the Third Quarter current account deficit had “unexpectedly” increased 11.7% to post the widest gap since the fourth quarter of 2008, are just the latest such indicators).
Given that the U.S. economy has, on average, experienced a recession every six years, the 6.5-year longevity of the current “expansion” should be raising eyebrows, even if the data wasn’t falling faster than a bowling ball with wings.
So what happens when the Fed postpones its first rate hike until the death throes of a tepid recovery rather than doing so at the beginning of a strong one? If unemployment starts ticking up during an election cycle, can anyone really expect the Fed to follow through with its projected additional rate hikes and allow a full-blown recession to take hold prior to voters casting their ballots? All of this strongly suggests that this week’s rate hike was a “one-and-done” scenario that does nothing to extricate the Fed from the monetary trap it has created for itself.
Another big question is why the Fed decided to move in December, after doing nothing for so long. Clearly the markets were surprised and confused by the Fed’s failure to pull the trigger in September, when the economy appeared, at least to those who chose to ignore the bad data, to be on relatively solid footing. At that time, the Fed suggested that it needed to see more improvement before green lighting a liftoff. And while I tend not to place much stock in the pronouncements of most economists, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would claim that the data in December looks better than it did in September.
A much more likely explanation is that through its rhetoric the Fed had inadvertently backed itself into a corner. Even though the Fed would have preferred to leave rates at zero, the fear was that failure to raise them would damage its credibility. After having indicated for much of the past year that they had believed that the economy had improved enough to merit a rate increase later in 2015, to continue do to nothing would suggest that the Fed did not actually believe what it was saying. This was an outcome that they could not abide. If we could doubt them about their economic pronouncements, perhaps they have been equally disingenuous with their professed ability to shrink their balance sheet over the next few years, contain inflation if it ever reared its ugly head, or to prevent financial contagion from spreading during a new recession.
In truth there should be very little confidence that a new era has begun. A symbolic 25 basis point credibility-saving gesture, coming just two weeks before year-end, is really a non-event. It’s the equivalent of a credibility Hail Mary, with the Fed desperately trying to infuse confidence into a “recovery” that for all practical purposes has already ended.
The question will be whether such a small move will be enough to push an already slowing economy into recession that much sooner. Over the past seven years the U.S. economy has become dependent on zero percent interest rates. But as with the famous Warren Buffet bathing suit maxim, these dependencies won’t be fully revealed until the tide rolls out and those zero percent rates are taken away. The bigger question is how quickly the Fed will reverse course. Will it move once it becomes painfully obvious to everyone that we are headed into another recession, or will it wait until we are officially knee deep in a contraction that is even bigger than the last one?
The new rounds of rate cutting and Quantitative Easing that the Fed will have to unleash will echo the military “surge” in Iraq in 2007. Those fresh troops were needed to roll back the chaos that the Administration had ignored for so long. But just as that surge only bought us a few years of relative calm, look for the gains brought about by our next monetary surge to be even more transitory. That is a development for which virtually no one on Wall Street is preparing.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/peter-schiff/mission-accomplished/
By Peter Schiff
On May 1, 2003 on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln then President George W. Bush, after becoming the first U.S. president to land on an aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft (in a dashing olive drab flight suit), declared underneath an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner that “major combat operations” in Iraq had been concluded, that regime change had been effected, and that America had prevailed in its mission to transform the Middle East. 13 years later, after years of additional combat operations in Iraq, and a Middle East that is spiraling out of control and increasingly disdainful of America’s influence, we look back at the “Mission Accomplished” event as the epitome of false confidence and premature celebration.
The image of W on the flight deck comes to mind in much of the reaction to this week’s decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. While many in the media and on Wall Street talked of a “concluded experiment” and the “dawning of a new era,” few realize that we are just as firmly caught in the thickets of failed policy as were Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in the misunderstood quagmire of 2003 Iraq.
In its initial story of the day’s events, The Washington Post (12/16/15) declared that by raising the Fed Funds rate to one quarter of a percent The Fed is “ending an era of easy money that helped save the nation from another Great Depression.” Putting aside the fact that 25 basis points is still 175 points below the near 2.0% rate of core inflation that the government has reported over the past 12 months (and should therefore be considered undeniably easy), the more important question to ask is into what environment the Fed is apparently turning this page.
Historically, the Fed has begun its tightening cycles during the early stages of expansions, when the economy had enough forward momentum to absorb the headwinds of rate increases. But that is not at all the case this time around.
Prior to the recent Great Recession, there had been six recessions since 1969, and over those episodes, on average 13.3 months passed from the time the recession ended to when the Fed felt confident enough in the recovery to raise rates. (The lag time was just 3.5 months in the four recessions between 1971 and 1991). (The National Bureau of Economic Research, US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions, 4/23/12)
But after the recession of 2008 – 2009, the Fed waited a staggering 78 months to tighten the monetary levers. Those prior tightening cyclesalso occurred at times when GDP was much higher than it is today. Over the prior six occasions GDP, in the quarter when the Fed moved, averaged a robust 5.3%. While the current quarterly GDP is still unknown, the data suggests that we will get a figure between 1% and 2% annualized. (Bureau of Economic Analysis)
Another key difference is the level of unemployment at the time the hikes occurred. As they started tightening much earlier in the expansion cycles, unemployment at the times of those prior recoveries tended to be high but falling. The average unemployment rate at the time the six prior tightenings occurred was 7.5%. But that average rate had fallen to 5.1% (a level that most economists consider to be “full employment”) an average of 42 months after the initial Fed tightening. In other words, those expansions were young enough and strong enough to absorb the rate hikes while still bringing down unemployment. (Bureau of Labor Statistics; Federal Reserve Bank of NY)
Our current unemployment rate has already fallen to 5.0% (mostly because workers have dropped out of the labor force). Few economists allow for the possibility that it could fall much lower. This is particularly true when you acknowledge the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions that we are seeing today.
As I stated in my most recent commentary, there is a growing troth of data that shows that the U.S. economy is rapidly losing momentum. Some data points, such as the inventory to sales ratio and the ISM manufacturing data suggest that a bona fide recession may be right around the corner (among them, this week’s truly terrible manufacturing PMI and industrial production numbers, a very weak Philly Fed Outlook, the weakest service sector PMI of the year, a big drop in the Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index, and the announcement that the Third Quarter current account deficit had “unexpectedly” increased 11.7% to post the widest gap since the fourth quarter of 2008, are just the latest such indicators).
Given that the U.S. economy has, on average, experienced a recession every six years, the 6.5-year longevity of the current “expansion” should be raising eyebrows, even if the data wasn’t falling faster than a bowling ball with wings.
So what happens when the Fed postpones its first rate hike until the death throes of a tepid recovery rather than doing so at the beginning of a strong one? If unemployment starts ticking up during an election cycle, can anyone really expect the Fed to follow through with its projected additional rate hikes and allow a full-blown recession to take hold prior to voters casting their ballots? All of this strongly suggests that this week’s rate hike was a “one-and-done” scenario that does nothing to extricate the Fed from the monetary trap it has created for itself.
Another big question is why the Fed decided to move in December, after doing nothing for so long. Clearly the markets were surprised and confused by the Fed’s failure to pull the trigger in September, when the economy appeared, at least to those who chose to ignore the bad data, to be on relatively solid footing. At that time, the Fed suggested that it needed to see more improvement before green lighting a liftoff. And while I tend not to place much stock in the pronouncements of most economists, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would claim that the data in December looks better than it did in September.
A much more likely explanation is that through its rhetoric the Fed had inadvertently backed itself into a corner. Even though the Fed would have preferred to leave rates at zero, the fear was that failure to raise them would damage its credibility. After having indicated for much of the past year that they had believed that the economy had improved enough to merit a rate increase later in 2015, to continue do to nothing would suggest that the Fed did not actually believe what it was saying. This was an outcome that they could not abide. If we could doubt them about their economic pronouncements, perhaps they have been equally disingenuous with their professed ability to shrink their balance sheet over the next few years, contain inflation if it ever reared its ugly head, or to prevent financial contagion from spreading during a new recession.
In truth there should be very little confidence that a new era has begun. A symbolic 25 basis point credibility-saving gesture, coming just two weeks before year-end, is really a non-event. It’s the equivalent of a credibility Hail Mary, with the Fed desperately trying to infuse confidence into a “recovery” that for all practical purposes has already ended.
The question will be whether such a small move will be enough to push an already slowing economy into recession that much sooner. Over the past seven years the U.S. economy has become dependent on zero percent interest rates. But as with the famous Warren Buffet bathing suit maxim, these dependencies won’t be fully revealed until the tide rolls out and those zero percent rates are taken away. The bigger question is how quickly the Fed will reverse course. Will it move once it becomes painfully obvious to everyone that we are headed into another recession, or will it wait until we are officially knee deep in a contraction that is even bigger than the last one?
The new rounds of rate cutting and Quantitative Easing that the Fed will have to unleash will echo the military “surge” in Iraq in 2007. Those fresh troops were needed to roll back the chaos that the Administration had ignored for so long. But just as that surge only bought us a few years of relative calm, look for the gains brought about by our next monetary surge to be even more transitory. That is a development for which virtually no one on Wall Street is preparing.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/peter-schiff/mission-accomplished/
"There is no racist like an antiracist..."
The Will to Outrage
By Theodore Dalrymple
There is no racist like an antiracist: That is because he is obsessed by race, whose actual existence as often as not he denies. He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor.
That is why a recent cartoon in the Australian newspaper aroused the ire—I suspect the simulated ire, the kind of pleasantly self-righteous ire that we can all so easily work ourselves into if and when we want—of the guardians of racism purity.
The cartoon in question was by Bill Leak (who is no respecter of persons), and it showed a group of impoverished Indians sitting on the ground trying to eat some shards of smashed-up solar panels that had been given to them by the United Nations. One of them says, “It’s no good, you can’t eat them.” Another replies, “Hang on, let me try one with a bit of mango chutney.” The title of the cartoon was “Aid à la Mode.”
It was obvious to me that this was intended as a satirical comment on the deliberations of the recent climate conference in Paris, and not on poor Indians. The cartoonist meant to imply that climate change was principally the concern of the spoiled political class of rich nations, and that efforts to reduce worldwide carbon emissions from energy consumption would not benefit the desperately poor, quite the reverse: Rather they would inhibit the breakneck industrial growth that has lifted and is lifting so many millions out of abject poverty in countries that not long ago were deeply impoverished. There is even the suspicion that rich nations want to inhibit the breakneck industrial growth not so much to save the planet as to preserve their position relative to poor nations. At the very least, the cartoon was a variation on the old English proverb that fine words butter no parsnips; but it could also plausibly be interpreted as a protest against dishonest Western moral and intellectual imperialism.
But that is not how the entrepreneurs of outrage chose to interpret it. Instead they chose to interpret it as a deliberate slur on the capacities and intelligence of ordinary Indians, who (they claimed) were depicted as so stupid and backward that they did not understand the benefits of harnessing and using solar energy. The fact that, even after so much rapid economic growth, millions of Indians would understandably be more concerned with obtaining their next meal than with the alleged fate of the planet was missed by the deliberate obtuseness of these entrepreneurs of outrage, an obtuseness motivated by their desire to “maintain their rage” (to quote a former Australian prime minister addressing his supporters on being deprived of office).
Now, I have no idea whether the harnessing of solar energy is a sensible policy for India, or whether it would merely be an opportunity for corruption and illicit private enrichment on a vast scale—or both, of course, since they are not diametrically opposed.
No one who has experienced the pollution in India or China could doubt that it is a very serious problem (as it is, to a lesser degree, in the South of France, where one can detect the pollution by the smell and gritty quality of the air as one approaches within fifty kilometers of Marseille), though whether such pollution can be dealt with only or even significantly by the use of solar energy is another question. But it is not the function of cartoonists to present a balanced view of a complex question; their method is the reductio ad absurdum of the side with which they disagree.
The reaction to the cartoon, however, was indicative of what one might call the will to outrage. This will precedes any object to which it might attach, and many people wait as if in ambush for something to feel angry about, pouncing on it with leopard-like joy (the leopard, so I was told in Africa, is particularly dangerous, for it kills for pleasure and not only for food).
Outrage supposedly felt on behalf of others is extremely gratifying for more than one reason. It has the appearance of selflessness, and everyone likes to feel that he is selfless. It confers moral respectability on the desire to hate or despise something or somebody, a desire never far from the human heart. It provides him who feels it the possibility of transcendent purpose, if he decides to work toward the elimination of the supposed cause of his outrage. And it may even give him a reasonably lucrative career, if he becomes a professional campaigner or politician: For there is nothing like stirring up resentment for the creation of a political clientele.
Antiracism is a perfect cause for those with free-floating outrage because it puts them automatically on the side of the angels without any need personally to sacrifice anything. You have only to accuse others of it to feel virtuous yourself. There is no defense against the accusation: The very attempt at a defense demonstrates the truth of it. As a consequence of this, it is a rhetorical weapon of enormous power that can be wielded against anybody who opposes your views. It reduces them to silence.
I once used the accusation myself in a most unscrupulous way, just to see its effect. About twenty years ago I was in the company of right-thinking people (that is to say, people who thought differently from me), among whom was an eminent human rights lawyer of impeccably internationalist outlook. She was speaking with characteristic self-righteousness about a case in which someone’s newly discovered human rights had been infringed. It was shortly after the Rwandan genocide had taken place and, fed up by her moral complacency, I accused her of racism. How could she concern herself with this case, I demanded to know, when half a million people or more had just been slaughtered and the perpetrators were unpunished (as at that time they still were)? Was it because she was racist and did not consider that all those lost lives were important because they were black?
It was a preposterous thing to say, of course, completely unjust and without any foundation, and I knew it. What interested me, however, was the panic on the face of the lawyer as I accused her. It was as if I had accused St. Simeon Stylites of harboring secret sexual desires and proclivities on top of his pillar, particularly at night. She was rattled, not because what I said had any truth in it, but because it was difficult or impossible to demonstrate to the assembled company that there was none. They might therefore have thought, because there is no smoke without fire, that she was indeed not entirely free of racism. For a moment—but, of course, not for long—she feared for her auto-sanctity.
I have not used the rhetorical trick since, but something similar might be usefully employed against the detractors of Bill Leak. They are the racists, because they refuse to believe that Indians may have different interests and opinions.
Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.
Link:
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By Theodore Dalrymple
There is no racist like an antiracist: That is because he is obsessed by race, whose actual existence as often as not he denies. He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor.
That is why a recent cartoon in the Australian newspaper aroused the ire—I suspect the simulated ire, the kind of pleasantly self-righteous ire that we can all so easily work ourselves into if and when we want—of the guardians of racism purity.
The cartoon in question was by Bill Leak (who is no respecter of persons), and it showed a group of impoverished Indians sitting on the ground trying to eat some shards of smashed-up solar panels that had been given to them by the United Nations. One of them says, “It’s no good, you can’t eat them.” Another replies, “Hang on, let me try one with a bit of mango chutney.” The title of the cartoon was “Aid à la Mode.”
It was obvious to me that this was intended as a satirical comment on the deliberations of the recent climate conference in Paris, and not on poor Indians. The cartoonist meant to imply that climate change was principally the concern of the spoiled political class of rich nations, and that efforts to reduce worldwide carbon emissions from energy consumption would not benefit the desperately poor, quite the reverse: Rather they would inhibit the breakneck industrial growth that has lifted and is lifting so many millions out of abject poverty in countries that not long ago were deeply impoverished. There is even the suspicion that rich nations want to inhibit the breakneck industrial growth not so much to save the planet as to preserve their position relative to poor nations. At the very least, the cartoon was a variation on the old English proverb that fine words butter no parsnips; but it could also plausibly be interpreted as a protest against dishonest Western moral and intellectual imperialism.
But that is not how the entrepreneurs of outrage chose to interpret it. Instead they chose to interpret it as a deliberate slur on the capacities and intelligence of ordinary Indians, who (they claimed) were depicted as so stupid and backward that they did not understand the benefits of harnessing and using solar energy. The fact that, even after so much rapid economic growth, millions of Indians would understandably be more concerned with obtaining their next meal than with the alleged fate of the planet was missed by the deliberate obtuseness of these entrepreneurs of outrage, an obtuseness motivated by their desire to “maintain their rage” (to quote a former Australian prime minister addressing his supporters on being deprived of office).
Now, I have no idea whether the harnessing of solar energy is a sensible policy for India, or whether it would merely be an opportunity for corruption and illicit private enrichment on a vast scale—or both, of course, since they are not diametrically opposed.
No one who has experienced the pollution in India or China could doubt that it is a very serious problem (as it is, to a lesser degree, in the South of France, where one can detect the pollution by the smell and gritty quality of the air as one approaches within fifty kilometers of Marseille), though whether such pollution can be dealt with only or even significantly by the use of solar energy is another question. But it is not the function of cartoonists to present a balanced view of a complex question; their method is the reductio ad absurdum of the side with which they disagree.
The reaction to the cartoon, however, was indicative of what one might call the will to outrage. This will precedes any object to which it might attach, and many people wait as if in ambush for something to feel angry about, pouncing on it with leopard-like joy (the leopard, so I was told in Africa, is particularly dangerous, for it kills for pleasure and not only for food).
Outrage supposedly felt on behalf of others is extremely gratifying for more than one reason. It has the appearance of selflessness, and everyone likes to feel that he is selfless. It confers moral respectability on the desire to hate or despise something or somebody, a desire never far from the human heart. It provides him who feels it the possibility of transcendent purpose, if he decides to work toward the elimination of the supposed cause of his outrage. And it may even give him a reasonably lucrative career, if he becomes a professional campaigner or politician: For there is nothing like stirring up resentment for the creation of a political clientele.
Antiracism is a perfect cause for those with free-floating outrage because it puts them automatically on the side of the angels without any need personally to sacrifice anything. You have only to accuse others of it to feel virtuous yourself. There is no defense against the accusation: The very attempt at a defense demonstrates the truth of it. As a consequence of this, it is a rhetorical weapon of enormous power that can be wielded against anybody who opposes your views. It reduces them to silence.
I once used the accusation myself in a most unscrupulous way, just to see its effect. About twenty years ago I was in the company of right-thinking people (that is to say, people who thought differently from me), among whom was an eminent human rights lawyer of impeccably internationalist outlook. She was speaking with characteristic self-righteousness about a case in which someone’s newly discovered human rights had been infringed. It was shortly after the Rwandan genocide had taken place and, fed up by her moral complacency, I accused her of racism. How could she concern herself with this case, I demanded to know, when half a million people or more had just been slaughtered and the perpetrators were unpunished (as at that time they still were)? Was it because she was racist and did not consider that all those lost lives were important because they were black?
It was a preposterous thing to say, of course, completely unjust and without any foundation, and I knew it. What interested me, however, was the panic on the face of the lawyer as I accused her. It was as if I had accused St. Simeon Stylites of harboring secret sexual desires and proclivities on top of his pillar, particularly at night. She was rattled, not because what I said had any truth in it, but because it was difficult or impossible to demonstrate to the assembled company that there was none. They might therefore have thought, because there is no smoke without fire, that she was indeed not entirely free of racism. For a moment—but, of course, not for long—she feared for her auto-sanctity.
I have not used the rhetorical trick since, but something similar might be usefully employed against the detractors of Bill Leak. They are the racists, because they refuse to believe that Indians may have different interests and opinions.
Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.
Link:
http://takimag.com/article/the_will_to_outrage_theodore_dalrymple/print#ixzz3uxLRFjPP
Saturday, December 19, 2015
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